SOLD Travels across Yemen and the Red Sea

 

SOLD

Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 264pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In 1978 Eric Hansen found himself shipwrecked on a desert island in the Red Sea. When goat smugglers offered him safe passage to Yemen, he buried seven years' worth of travel journals deep in the sand and took his place alongside the animals on a leaky boat bound for a country that he'd never planned to visit.

As he tells of the turbulent seas that stranded him on the island and of his efforts to retrieve his buried journals when he returned to Yemen ten years later, Hansen enthralls us with a portrait -- uncannily sympathetic and wildly offbeat -- of this forgotten corner of the Middle East. 

With a host of extraordinary characters from his guide, Mohammed, ever on the lookout for one more sheep to squeeze into the back seat of his car, to madcap expatriates and Eritrean gun runners- and with landscapes that include cities of dreamlike architectural splendor, endless sand dunes, and terrifying mountain passes, Hansen reveals the indelible allure of a land steeped in custom, conflicts old and new, and uncommon beauty.

SOLD A feminist novel/memoir from Egypt

 

SOLD

Excellent condition. PB. 101pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Rebelling against the constraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman in a class of men. 

Her encounters with the other students - as well as with male and female corpses in the autopsy room - intensify her search for identity. 

She realises that men are not gods, as her mother had taught her, that science cannot explain everything, and that she cannot be satisfied by living a life purely of the mind. 

After a brief and unhappy marriage, she throws herself into her work, becoming a successful and wealthy doctor. 

But at the same time, she becomes more aware of the injustice and hypocrisy in society. She comes to find fulfilment, not in isolation, but through her relationship with others.

Travels through Central Asia

 

Mint condition. PB. 304pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In her fifties, a single mother and artist set forth on an unpredictable journey through central Asia, documenting her travels. 

These amazing memoirs detail Christine's moments of tragedy, terror, and tranquility in her long journey along the Silk Road across Central Asia. 

Travelling alone, she was able to rely on the kindness of the local people and the ancient wisdom of the Eastern masters to guide her. 

Her journey soon became a personal odyssey, carrying heavy video equipment and travelling rough on local transport, she filmed a documentary about her search for a mythical paradise on a mystical mountain, the kingdom of Shambhala - where heaven and earth meet.

Brainfood delivered!!

Lockdown is hard. Most bookshops are closed. Virtually all libraries are shut. So where are you going to get your brainfood?

Here at Planet Irf Books, we have a solution. But it only applies if you live or work within 25 km of this ...

If you buy at least $45 worth of books, we will be happy to deliver your books to you.

Don't forget to take $5 off the marked price. Then if your order is $45 or more and you live within 25km of the CBD, the books will be in your hand within 24 hours of receipt of payment!

Oh, and we can deliver up until 10pm.

Travels in Mongolia

 

Mint condition. PB. 170pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In the years following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 British diplomats undertook several consular missions to remote areas of China and Mongolia. 

On the journey described here, Consul C.W. Campbell travels north from Peking across the Gobi Desert into Mongolia. 

On his route he describes the history, landscape and the way of life of those he meets. 

Uncovered Editions are historic official papers now available in popular form.

Hilarious book of fictitious travel

 

Good condition. PB. 274pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over fifty years at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. 

Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon Southwood, his dahlias and the Major next door to travel her way, Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay. 

Through Aunt Augusta, a veteran of Europe's hotel bedrooms, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society: mixing with hippies, war criminals, CIA men; smoking pot, breaking all the currency regulations and eventually coming alive after a dull suburban life. 

In Travels with my Aunt Graham Greene not only gives us intoxicating entertainment but also confronts us with some of the most perplexing of human dilemmas.

Across Africa on a bike

 

 

Mint condition. PB. 528pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Who has not wanted to escape the daily grind, to search for life and adventure elsewhere? Australian-born and London-based Pamela Watson had a comfortable, if overworked existence, as a management consultant but yearned for freedom and the adventure. "That's it!" she thought. "I'll cycle across Africa!" Join her on this intoxicating journey that began as a search for adventure and turned into a journey of self-discovery.

Perplexed by what causes her to choose suffering over comfort, she perseveres and along the way discovers companionship, kindness and compassion, and injustices that burn through the page. Cycling for a year and a half, covering nearly 15,000 kilometres and crossing through seventeen countries, she encountered an Africa rarely reported in the media and experienced first-hand the violent tinderbox of local politics. She discovers women are the backbone of rural Africa and is shocked to learn their responsibilities are not matched by their access to basic human rights.

Now in its third edition, Esprit de Battuta: Alone Across Africa on a Bicycle is a must-read for all armchair adventurers, those who are curious about the everyday lives of the people of the rural villages of Africa and those who dare to challenge the status quo.

About the author

Pamela Watson is an intrepid adventurer and businesswoman. Born in Perth, Western Australia she grew up watching the sun setting in the west and as an adult followed its pathway to Africa. From her intoxicating solo cycling journey in the `90s, travels to 32 countries in Africa, her thrilling entrepreneurial and diplomatic adventures in Nigeria in the 2000s and her ongoing work in Africa, she has a rare insight into Africa's complex and challenging past and present, and offers an optimistic appraisal of how its future might unfold. Pamela is passionate about doing business to her own beat and championing Lagos and the unleashed potential of Africa's female entrepreneurs.

Walking from London to the Sahara

 

Excellent condition. PB. 304pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Paula Constant and her husband, Gary, attempt to break away from the conventional 9-to-5 routine, a few weeks lazing in a resort or packed in a tour bus is not what they have in mind. 

What starts out as an idle daydream to embark on 'a travel to end all travels' turns into something far greater- an epic year-long 5000-kilometre walk from Trafalgar Square in London to Morocco and the threshold of the Sahara Desert. 

Quite an ambition for an unfit woman who favours sharing cigarettes and a few bottles of wine with friends over logging time on the treadmill. 

But if the sheer arduousness of walking over 25 kilometres a day through the landscapes and cultural labyrinths of France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco - without a support vehicle - is overlooked in her excitement, then so too is the unexpected journey of self discovery and awakening that lies beyond every bend. 

Both the companions she meets on the road and the road itself provide what no university can offer- a chance to experience life's simple truths face to face. 

Paula's transformation from an urban primary school teacher into a successful expeditioner is a true tale of an ordinary woman achieving something extraordinary. 

It is a journey that begins with one footstep.

Tom Ducevic writes about growing up in a family of post-war refugees in 1970's Australia

 

Rare book. Excellent condition. PB. 272pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In this exuberant and compelling memoir of family and childhood, readers will be swept away by Tom Dusevic's verve, warmth and honesty.

Suburban Sydney in the 1970s is an adventure playground, especially for a busybody, free-range kid with energy, big appetites and ungodly urges. In such open space, backyards are arenas for daydreaming and free play, scars are marks of wisdom and school is an obstacle course between pleasure and pain. And so is home, as the author tries to make sense of his parents' history and identity, known but unknowable, as post-war refugees from Croatia. He longs to be liberated from the family's quirks and the past and finds his escape in quiet moments of awe and simplicity.

This is a sensory tale of a glorious time to grow up in Australia by a visceral writer whose epiphanies are as startling as they are hilarious. From rowdy street protests and footy crowds, to the serenity of the Roselands Raindrop Fountain and storm-water canals, to the fevered set of a TV quiz show and the disco floor, Dusevic launches himself into the whole wild world.

About the author

Tom Dusevic is a journalist and writer. One of Australia's leading feature writers, he has worked for The Australian, The Weekend Australian Magazine, The Good Weekend and Time Magazine.

'Tom Dusevic's memoir is the most precious kind of reading experience: it is joy on every page. It is beautifully written, vibrant and true: simultaneously a detailed record of an experience of time and place and family, but also transcending simple factual recount to be a work of pure imagination. Tom manages to re-inhabit his Sydney childhood with the perfect writerly combination of immediacy, resonance and distance, and in achieving that balance, he makes the personal universal. Do yourself a favour. Buy this memoir'

-Katharine Murphy, political editor, Guardian Australia