Стив Конте0.0 A story of passion and sacrifice in a city battered by war ...
It is 1943 and each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman‚ Vera‚ shelters with her German husband‚ Axel‚ the zoo′s director.
Together‚ they struggle to look after the animals through the air raids and food shortages. When the zoo′s staff is drafted into the army‚ forced labourers are sent in as replacements. At first‚ Vera finds the idea abhorrent‚ but gradually she realises that the new workers are the zoo′s only hope‚ and forms an unlikely bond with one of them.
This is a city where a foreign accent is a constant source of suspicion‚ where busybodies report the names of neighbours′ dinner guests to the Gestapo. As tensions mount in the closing days of the war‚ nothing‚ and no one‚ it seems‚ can be trusted.
The Zookeeper′s War is a powerful novel of a marriage‚ and of a city collapsing. It confronts not only the brutality of war but the possibility of heroism − and delivers an ending that is both shocking and deeply moving.
Гейл Джонс0.0 In the remote Australian outback during World War II, the emotionally stunted child of an English couple is befriended by equally adrift strangers. Perdita becomes friends with a deaf and mute boy, Billy, and an Aboriginal girl, Mary. Perdita and Mary soon come to call one another sister and begin to share a profound bond. They are content with life in this barren corner of the world until a terrible event lays waste to their lives. "Sorry" explores the values of friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice with a brilliance that has earned Gail Jones numerous accolades
Томас Кенилли0.0 In 1943, when Grace and Leo Waterhouse married in Australia, they were part of a young generation ready to sacrifice themselves to win the war, while being confident they would survive. 60 years on, as Grace recounts what happened to her doomed hero, she can say what she suspected then, that men are fundamentally childish.
Малкольм Нокс0.0 Six friends head for Jamaica to take part in the Negociate Classic, a notoriously tough and dangerous deep-water swimming race. Beautiful, rich, and favored by fortune, they ooze confidence and success.
Jeremy Hutchison doesn’t belong with these golden people, but his dogged admiration and enthusiasm—not to mention his money—have earned him a place. But beneath the surface this is a group on the edge of crisis—none more so than Jeremy, who is playing for the highest stakes of all. As the race approaches and the tension builds to an excruciating pitch, the friends turn from each other to face the doubts and secrets of their own lives.
Taut and engrossing, this is a compulsive read from an unflinching observer of human folly. But even as Knox peels away the layers and exposes the brutal reality beneath the façade of friendship, he hints at the possibility of human kindness and the redemptive power of love.
David Malouf0.0 From the internationally acclaimed Australian writer: a single volume gathering a brilliant new collection of his short fiction, Every Move You Make, and all of his previously published stories.
In the heretofore unpublished Every Move You Make: bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse, a builder-architect and his legacy--here are their stories, whole lives brought dramatically into focus and powerfully rooted in the vividly rendered landscape of the vast Australian continent, from the mysterious, glittering Valley of Lagoons in Far North Queensland to bohemian Sydney to Ayres Rock in the Great Victoria Desert. These tender, subtle, and intimate stories give us men and women looking for something they seem to have missed, or missed out on, puzzling over not only their own lives but also the place they have come to occupy in the lives of others.
Heartbreakingly beautiful, richly satisfying, The Complete Stories also includes David Malouf’s short fiction from Dream Stuff, Antipodes, and Child’s Play. It is a major literary event.
Dorothy Porter0.0 There is a serial child killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. He kills his victims gently and places a gold mark on their head. The mark of El Dorado.
He doesn't kill because he hates children, but because he loves them. He believes in Childhood Innocence, and he will kill to entomb them there...
This is a book about a friendship under siege, and how jealousy and betrayal cast very long shadows – which can stalk you to the grave.
Philip Jones0.0 Takes Aboriginal and colonial artefacts from their museum shelves, and traces their stories, revealing charge and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia's frontier history.
Philip G. Dwyer0.0 At just thirty years of age, Napoleon Bonaparte ruled the most powerful country in Europe. But the journey that led him there was neither inevitable nor smooth. This authoritative biography focuses on the evolution of Napoleon as a leader and debunks many of the myths that are often repeated about him—sensational myths often propagated by Napoleon himself. Here, Philip Dwyer sheds new light on Napoleon’s inner life—especially his darker side and his passions—to reveal a ruthless, manipulative, driven man whose character has been disguised by the public image he carefully fashioned to suit the purposes of his ambition.
Dwyer focuses acutely on Napoleon’s formative years, from his Corsican origins to his French education, from his melancholy youth to his flirtation with radicals of the French Revolution, from his first military campaigns in Italy and Egypt to the political-military coup that brought him to power in 1799. One of the first truly modern politicians, Napoleon was a master of “spin,” using the media to project an idealized image of himself. Dwyer’s biography of the young Napoleon provides a fascinating new perspective on one of the great figures of modern history.
Raymond Evans0.0 A History of Queensland is the first single volume analysis of Queensland's past, stretching from the time of earliest human habitation up to the present. It encompasses pre-contact Aboriginal history, the years of convictism, free settlement and subsequent urban and rural growth. It takes the reader through the tumultuous frontier and Federation years, the World Wars, the Cold War, the controversial Bjelke-Petersen era and on, beyond the beginning of the new millennium. It reveals Queensland as a sprawling, harsh, diverse and conflictual place, where the struggles of race, ethnicity, class, generation and gender have been particularly pronounced, and political and environmental encounters have remained intense. It is a colourful, surprising and at times disturbing saga, a perplexing and diverting mixture of ferocity, endurance and optimism.
Zarah Ghahramani0.0 At the age of twenty, an Iranian student named Zarah Ghahramani was swept off the streets of Tehran and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side in conditions of legendary brutality. Her crime, she asserts, was in wanting to slide back her headscarf to feel the sun on a few inches of her hair. That modest desire led her to a political activism fueled by the fearless idealism of the young. Her parents begged her to be prudent, but even they could not have imagined the horrors she faced in prison. She underwent psychological and physical torture, hanging on to sanity by scratching messages to fellow prisoners on the latrine door. She fought despair by recalling her idyllic childhood in a sprawling and affectionate family that prized tolerance and freedom of thought. After a show trial, Ghahramani was driven deep into the desert outside Tehran, uncertain if she was to be executed or freed. There she was abandoned to begin the long walk back to reclaim herself. In prose of astonishing dignity and force, Ghahramani recounts the ways in which power seduces and deforms. A richly textured memoir that celebrates a triumph of the individual over the state, "My Life as a Traitor "is an affecting addition to the literature of struggle and dissent. Zarah Ghahramani was born in Tehran in 1981. After her release from prison, she moved to Australia. "My Life as a Traitor "is her first book.
Robert Hillman is a journalist and novelist who has traveled widely in the Middle East. A "San Francisco Chronicle" Best Book of the Year
At the age of twenty, an Iranian student named Zarah Ghahramani was taken from the streets of Tehran to the notoriously brutal Evin Prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side. A desire for freedom as modest as sliding back her headscarf to feel the sun on her hair had compelled her to join a group of university students covertly organizing peaceful campus protests. Ghahramani was fueled by youthful idealism, and though her parents encouraged her to be prudent, she underestimated the severity of the penalties imposed by the fundamentalist regime running her country.
She underwent psychological and physical torture, hanging on to sanity by scratching messages to fellow prisoners on the latrine door. She fought despair by recalling her idyllic childhood in a sprawling and affectionate family that prized tolerance and freedom of thought. After a show trial, Ghahramani was driven deep into the desert outside Tehran, uncertain if she was to be executed or freed. There she was abandoned to begin the long walk back to rebuild herself in a world in which she had no trust in her country's goverment and where she would continue to challenge fundamentalist injustice as she sought to reclaim her own liberty. "A testimony of surviving senseless persecution, imprisonment, torture, and the loss of years of one's youth with one's spirits intact. With deep insights into the meaning of suffering and the futility of hate and thoughts of revenge, the young author, just out of her teens, withstands all psychological and physical abuse and comes out, despite the loss of her faith in authority figures and her country, wise and mature. Her defiance served her well. Read with this in mind, the book is truly an inspiration."--Erika Loeffler Friedl, author of "Women of Deh Koh: Lives in an Iranian Village
""A celebration of human courage under duress and a savage indictment of the oppressive regime of Iran. It shocks, angers, saddens, and inspires."--Khaled Hosseini, author of "The" "Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns
"""My Life as a Traitor" is an important and revealing book about a culture and a country that figures hugely in modern geopolitics. It is the inner journey of one young woman, of her fear, pride, courage, and ultimate survival in Tehran's brutal Evin Prison. But it is also a coming-of-age story that haunts and provokes; beautifully written and disturbingly unforgettable. It will stand beside Solzhenitysn and Primo Levi as a book that shows exactly how human beings survive in the face of true evil."--Janine di Giovanni, author of "Madness Visible: A Memoir of War
""A must read for anyone interested in understanding the complex nation that is Iran."--Firoozeh Dumas, author of "Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America
"""My Life as a Traitor" is both shocking and inspiring: a graphic portrayal of the horrors that are unleashed when the idealism of youth challenges the dogmatism of zealots. Zarah Ghahramani has written a very human story of bravery and fear in the face of violence; her story is one of longing for beauty and freedom. Zarah's memoir of her time in Iran's infamous Evin prison is unforgettable in its portrayal of brutality, but it sings with a young woman's love of life and liberty."--Louise Brown, author of "The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Ancient Pleasure District"
"The second-year Iranian college student in 2001 knew that making that speech meant trouble, but she had no real expectation of being kidnapped in the heart of Tehran and hustled off to the notorious Evin Prison. Eventually, the 20-year-old Ghahramani is sentenced to 30 days and a few days--and several beatings--later is dumped in a vacant countryside to make her way home. Scenes from a happy family life (crippled by the Iran-Iraq war) and a spirited adolescence (cut short by a repressive regime) alternate with the prison experiences in this multilayered account. Ghahramani, daughter of a Muslim father and Zoroastrian mother, both Kurdish, dips with brevity and grace into personal family history and public political history. Graphic and powerful as her treatment of torturous imprisonment is, Ghahramani retains an irrepressible lightness, perhaps born of knowing that [a] sense of justice can always benefit from a complementary sense of the ridiculous. Her painfully acquired knowledge of how easy it is to reduce a human being to the level of animal does not keep her from wondering if I'll ever be pretty again. Nothing, however, dilutes the bare bones prison experience. Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal beyond a mere record."--"Publishers Weekly"
Germaine Greer0.0 Little is known of the wife of England's greatest playwright. In play after play Shakespeare presents the finding of a worthy wife as a triumphant denouement, yet scholars persist in believing that his own wife was resented and even hated by him. Here Germaine Greer strives to re-embed the story of their marriage in its social context and presents new hypotheses about the life of the farmer's daughter who married our foremost poet. This is a daring, insightful book that asks new questions, opens new fields of investigation and research, and rights the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.
Paul Ham0.0 "War takes a blender to standards and values ... Men come back and spend the rest of their lives trying to find out who they are ..." - Harry Whiteside, who served with the SAS and the Royal Australian Regiment in Vietnam.
"Surely God weeps," an Australian soldier wrote in despair of the conflict in Vietnam.
But no God intervened to shorten the years of carnage and devastation in this most controversial of wars.
Seen as the last "hot" frontline of the Cold War, the ten-year struggle in the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam unleashed the most devastating firepower on the Vietnamese nation and visited terrible harm on civilians and soldiers.
Yet the Australian forces applied tactics that were very different from those of the Americans. Guided by their commanders" experience of jungle combat, Australian troops operated with stealth, deception and restraint in pursuing a "better war".
Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign.
From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti-war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefield, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians" war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.
More than 500 soldiers were killed and thousands wounded. Those who made it home returned to a hostile and ignorant country and a reception that scarred them forever.This is their story.
Paul Ham′s Vietnam: The Australian War was awarded the Australian History Prize at the 2008 NSW Premier′s Awards. The judges praised Ham for his comprehensive approach to Australia′s involvement in the Vietnam War and his ability to communicate with both specialist and general readers. They said:
′A significant number of books have appeared over the past decade or so focusing on Australia′s involvement in World War I, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars ... What distinguishes Paul Ham′s book is the comprehensive nature of its approach, which encompasses the political and military history of Australia′s involvement in Vietnam as well as the domestic social and cultural context. It is also a book that tells the human side of the war ... It is a beautifully told story of human frailty, of the shortcomings and lack of vision of those political leaders who committed Australian troops to Vietnam; and of the narrow-minded ideologies that drove some of those who opposed the war. It is a wonderful narrative, reflecting an extraordinary knowledge of the subject, which convincingly demonstrates the important role the Vietnam War played in shaping Australia′s history.′
Клив Джеймс0.0 ‘In this book can be heard the merest edge of an enormous conversation. As they never were in life, we can imagine the speakers all gathered in some vast room, wearing name tags in case they don’t recognize each other (although some recognize each other all too well, and avoid contact). My heroes and heroines are here. The reader will recognize some of their names, while other names will be more obscure. My intellectual betes noires are here too, and the same division might apply.’
An almanac combining a comprehensive survey of modern culture with an annotated index of who-was-who and what-was-what, Cultural Amnesia is Clive James’ unique take on the places and the faces that shaped the twentieth-century. From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record – and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
Том Гриффитс0.0 In 2002, environmental historian Tom Griffiths set sail with the Australian Antartic Division to deliver a new team of winterers. In this book, Griffiths reflects on the history of human experiences in Antartica, taking the reader on a journey of exploration, discovery and adventure in an unforgettable land.
John Fitzgerald0.0 Short listed for the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. Much has been written about the White Australia Policy, but very little has been written about it from a Chinese perspective. Big White Lie shifts our understanding of the White Australia Policy—and indeed White Australia—by exploring what Chinese Australians were saying and doing at a time when they were officially excluded. Big White Lie pays close attention to Chinese migration patterns, debates, social organizations, and their business and religious lives and shows that they had every right to be counted as Australians, even in White Australia. The book's focus on Chinese Australians provides a refreshing new perspective on the important role the Chinese have played in Australia's past at a time when China's likely role in Australia's future is more compelling than ever.
Philip Jones0.0 Takes Aboriginal and colonial artefacts from their museum shelves, and traces their stories, revealing charge and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia's frontier history.
