Postwar changes

Empire day / Diane Armstrong. Pymble, N.S.W.: Fourth Estate, 2011

Bondi Junction in the late 1940s is a microcosm of changing Australia, and life is changing too fast for locals like salt-of-the-earth Pop Wilson, prickly Miss McNulty and feisty single mum Kath, all of whom resent the European 'reffos' who have moved in. The newcomers are struggling to rebuild their lives while the unhealed wounds of the past threaten to overwhelm them. As the lives of the neighbours interweave, unexpected new relationships cause tragedy for some, but forgiveness and salvation for others. Ultimately the residents of Wattle Street discover that behind closed doors, Old as well as New Australians have secret heartaches which poison their lives. Part love story, part mystery and part crime investigation.
'A captivating story with a host of interesting characters. Armstrong weaves a multi-strand novel that explores the clash of old and new Australians.'
THE AUSTRALIAN JEWISH NEWS

Political refugees

The marsh birds / Eve Sallis. Crows Nest, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2005.

The Marsh Birds has three parts. The first describes how Dhurgham, separated from his family while fleeing Iraq, survives in Damascus, picked up by a middle-aged man whose exploitation takes the guise of protection and love. The second describes how Dhurgham makes it to Australia on a rickety boat, then ends up in the limbo of detention as a failed asylum seeker.
The third part of The Marsh Birds is the only part that offers Dhurgham any possible future; he makes it to New Zealand as a refugee from Australia's detention system, and spends some time with a New Zealand family. But by this time, schooled to the brutal fact of what it means to be utterly alone, we are not surprised when the machinery of international relations crushes this small chance of happiness.

Romance in a far country

The far country / Nevil Shute. London : Heinemann 1952

 Set in 1950, the story takes place partly in London and partly in Australia. Jennifer Morton, a young Englishwoman leaves her aging parents to visit friends in the Australian outback. She falls in love with both the country and Carl Zlinter, a 'New Australian'; a Czech refugee who is working at a nearby lumber camp,.  a condition of his free passage to Australia. Brought together by strange twists of fate, their relationship hangs in the balance when Jennifer is forced to return to England.

"...a story that follows more or less predictable lines for a warm and heartening tale." (Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1952)

Book to film

Turtle Beach / Blanche D'Alpuget. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981

Malaysia 1979 - Judith Wilkes, an Australian journalist takes the opportunity to go to Malaysia--to do a story on the boat-people refugees: arriving from Vietnam in all their wretchedness, they've found only hatred and maltreatment in the coastal camps. Judith's guide is Minou Hobday, a Chinese/Vietnamese woman now married to the Australian ambassador in Kuala Lumpur.  Judith finds a much-needed model of independence, in Minou's perverse, outrageous sexiness--as well as in the culture and steamy climate of Malaysia itself. But this image is short-lived. . . because it soon appears that Minou isn't really so free and commanding as she seems: her own family is to be on the next boat arriving illegally in Malaysian waters; her personal charisma and government connections probably won't help her to insure their safety.

"...d'Alpuget's first novel to appear here is vivid, taut, sex-perfumed: a distinctive performance from one of Australia's more promising newcomers."  (Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1983)   

Life and death

The boat / Nam Le. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2008

"The Boat will be read for as long as people read books. Its vision and its power are timeless." Mary Gaitskill

This fiction debut comprises moving short stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea. In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam — and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test, while in "Meeting Elise" an aging New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut.

"...the final story, "The Boat", about a Vietnamese refugee in a boat carrying twice its capacity, surrounded by other refugees, and sickness, and storms. It is the harrowing highlight in a book full of them."

Australian Book Review, Louise Swinn, July 2008

Not an easy book to read there is a sadness at the core of Le's work. If there is a theme running through The Boat, it is that we only realise the real value of our relationships when it is too late to save them, and that living and dying  is ultimately a solitary endeavour. Almost all the stories are, one way or another, about the end of life, and the central characters emerge empowered, if disillusioned.

 

Russian tales

The family frying pan / Bryce Courtenay. Camberwell, Vic. : Penguin, 2006

Originally published as a serious of semi - linked short stories, The family frying pan was republished after some rewriting.
Mrs Moses is the only survivor of a Cossack raid on her village, takes her cast-iron frying pan and flees. No ordinary frying pan this is The Family Frying Pan, blessed with a Russian soul. Travelling across Russia seeking freedom and safety Mrs Mose is joined by various fellow escapees. Using the fring pan she manages to feed her fellow refugees, and in return, each of the group tells a story around the campfire at night - stories of compassion and bravery, of human frailty and above all of hope.

War close to home

The devil's tears / Steven Horne. Sydney: Macmillan Australia, 2010


The Devil's tears is a gripping novel, which takes the reader right into the heart of East Timor; firstly at the time of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, and then some 22 years later. In 1975, when bloody war raveages his beloved Portuguese Timor, Cesar da Silva flees with his wife and children from a country in flames. Becoming separated from his young family and believing they are dead, Cesar finds passage to Portugal and later Australia. In occupied Timor, Cesar's wife is alive, but her troubles are far from over.
In 1997, more than 20 years later, a young Australian journalist and her photographer are drawn to the killing fields of Timor. Compelled to expose the truth of the terrible suffering of the Timorese people at the hands of the invaders to the world, they become entangled in the da Silva family tragedy.
Through the telling of these two intertwining personal stories the book gives great insight into what happened during the 24 year occupation, when around 100,000 people died from fighting, disease and starvation...
 

Surviving war

Cafe Scheherazade / Arnold Zable. Melbourne, Vic.: Text Publishing 2001

'In Acland Street, St Kilda, there stands a cafe called Scheherazade.'  With this reader begins a journey from Kobe to Paris, from Vilna to Melbourne.  A compelling meditation  on memory and place, Cafe Scheherazade traces the stories of Avram and Masha, the cafe proprieters; Yossel stalking the streets of Warsaw and Shanghai, Laizer exiled to vast Siberian forests and gentle Zalman, searching for the moment when all journeys end. This book faithfully depicts jewish holocaust survivors whose lives reflect the courage of refugees everywhere. 

Political thriller

Prohibited zone / Alastair Sarre.  Adelaide, SA :  Wakefield Press, 2011

Set in the desert of the Woomera Prohibited Area, suburban Adelaide and the Fleurieu  Peninsula, this political thriller, maintains intrigue and pace  throughout. In the dark days that followed 9/11, the hardest thing was sorting the good guys from the bad. In Australia they got it wrong. Saira Abdiani and her friend, Amir Ali Khan, are Afghan refugees with a violent past. When Saira and Amir both disappear from the Woomera Refugee Detention Centre, the cops, the secret service and a ragtag gang of vigilantes are all on the trail. Steve West is a former football hero turned mining engineer who just wants a dirty weekend in town. He ends up seeing the dirty side of the War on Terror.

Alastair Sarre’s ear for dialogue, eye for place and character, and deft skill in pitting historical and political viewpoints against each other, make Prohibited Zone an excellent, provocative read.

Asylum in the Australian outback

Nights in the asylum / Carol Lefevre. Milsons Point, N.S.W.: Random House Australia, 2007

Set in a mining town in the Australian outback, Nights in the Asylum is the story of three people seeking shelter. Stricken with grief and guilt following the death of her daughter, Miri flees the city for the quiet calm of Havana Gardens, a once fine but now dilapidated mansion built for her grandmother. On the road she rescues Aziz, an Afghan refugee on the run from detention; then, in the attic of the old house, Miri discovers Suzette Moran and her baby daugher hiding, and grants them refuge.

Written in spare, taut prose, Nights in the Asylum is Miri's story; it is also a story of home, of belonging, of leaving one home and trying to make another, where-ever and how-ever you can.