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.

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)   

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.