Cirrus@Austlit

'Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.' (Publication summary)

'Steven Muir, August Spiess and his daughter Gertrude, and Lang Tzu all acknowledge a restless sense of cultural displacement, an ambivalence in their relations with the culture of European Australia. Steven left England for Australia as a young man and his one attempt at returning is unsuccessful. August Spiess, although he speaks frequently of returning to his native Hamburg, fails to make the journey, as does his daughter Gertrude. Lang Tzu's very name defines his fate: 'two characters which in Mandarin signify the son who goes away.

'The 'game', however, does have winners. For despite their yearnings for the home of their ancestral dreams, a desire to belong somewhere that is truly their own, none of Miller's characters leaves Australia, and each in their own way comes to see that to be at home in exile may be a defining paradox of the European Australian condition: the paradox of belonging and estrangement that perhaps lies uneasily at the heart of all European cultures.'

Source: Bookseller's blurb.

'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."

'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)

"The author describes his book as the answer to the question, so often asked, and posed in the title, as to why he went to China. It is not a history of the early, pre-Communist Republic of China; nor is it a complete biography. Fitzgerald's personality, does however, emerge from every page--independent-minded, obstinate, endlessly curious. The whole history of twentieth-century China and of modern Sinology is hardly humdrum, but this is an outstanding book by an unusual author. Here we have a first-hand account of old China surviving into the modern era, of China in turmoil, of old China hands, primitive transport and 'loony' missionaries."

Source: ANU Library.

'Spurred on by his encroaching blindness, prominent historian David Walker's Not Dark Yet is a frank, witty and innovative memoir that connects the small, seemingly inconsequential events of daily life to larger historical themes of family, war, patriotism, racial identity, religious belief, knowledge of the world and death. Not Dark Yet captures the elusive voice of middle-class Australia and explores the moral values and lifestyles of people who kept few written records.

'In taking a fresh look at historical writing, Not Dark Yet offers new ways of imagining the past and making the everyday world of homes, families, childhood and memory central to the national story.

'This beautifully written and generously illustrated book is both a new departure for the author and a strikingly original contribution to our literary heritage.' (From the publisher's website.)