SOLD Travel the world with one of Australia's finest travel writers

 

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Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 320pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Journey with Australia's favourite off-the-beaten-track travel writer to Hemingway's Havana haunts; chase the ghosts of Gauguin in French Polynesia; take a step back in showbiz history and legend at London's Savoy; join the Brotherhood of the Bear during the Arctic Circle summer; unfurl the sails of a classic clipper n the Andaman Sea; dance to the elated beat of freedom in East Timor with Xanana Gusmao; and rollick along Britain's rock/pop trail.

Memoir of an AFL legend

 

Mint condition. PB. 320pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In my experience, a lot of young Muslims feel they have to stray from Islam to earn people’s respect. My belief, and my message, is the opposite: that doing the right thing and being proud of your identity and beliefs will bring you real success – and even more than that, respect for yourself and your faith.’ FAITH, FOOTBALL and FAMILY is the long-awaited autobiography from one of the AFL's most fascinating men.

Bachar Houli is as accomplished an AFL footballer as they come. He’s been part of three Richmond Premiership sides, he was an All-Australian in 2019, and with over 200 games to his name he remains a key part of a champion team.

Picked at number 42 in the 2006 National Draft by Essendon, Houli played 26 games for the Bombers before moving in late 2010 via the pre-season draft to Tigerland, where rookie coach Damien Hardwick was assembling the team that six years later would achieve the seemingly impossible and claim Richmond’s 11th Premiership. Another flag followed two years later, with Houli close to best on ground in both deciders.

Yet it’s as the AFL’s most prominent Muslim player that Houli is best known – and his strong Muslim values are at the heart of the man he is. Writing for the first time, Houli explores the experiences and beliefs that sparked his trailblazing success as a Muslim footballer, and that established him as a leading voice within the AFL community for inclusion, understanding and tolerance.

Travels and commentary on the Sunshine State

 

Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 300pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Funny, personal and completely unexpected, Mango Country explores the notion that the further you venture from a nation's capital, the likelier you are to encounter its culture in the raw.

Journeying around North Queensland, jungle tour guide turned gonzo-journalist John van Tiggelen lingers in places that tourists are ill-advised, disinclined or simply unable to visit. He goes crocodile hunting, shoots a nude calendar for charity, joins the world's wildest cricket carnival, attends the opening of the Big Mango and flits around the Torres Strait on a wing and a prayer.

En route he is harassed by cassowaries, bush poets, thong collectors, falling coconuts, Bob Katter, and the alien commander of 18 million spaceships, among others. But he also harasses them.

Mango Country goes beyond the travel brochures to offer an irreverent profile of a province, and an insight into Australian life away from the big city lights.

Political biography of Jacinda Ardern

 

Mint condition. PB. 320pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

She is a progressive and a social democrat. A millennial woman in leadership. Only the second elected leader in the world to give birth while in office. But who is the real Jacinda Ardern? And why does she inspire such global admiration?

New Zealand's prime minister has been hailed as a leader for a new generation, tired of inaction in the face of issues such as climate change and far-right terrorism.

Her grace and compassion following the Christchurch mosque shooting captured the world's attention. Oprah Winfrey invited us to 'channel our inner Jacindas' as praise for Ardern flooded headlines and social media. The ruler of this remote country even made the cover of Time.

In this revealing biography, journalist Madeleine Chapman discovers the woman behind the headlines. Always politically engaged and passionate, Ardern is uncompromising and astute. She has encountered her fair share of sexism, but rather than let that harden her, she advocates 'rising above' disparagers. In her first press conference, she announced an election campaign of 'relentless positivity'. The tactic was a resounding success- donations poured in and Labour rebounded in the polls.

But has Ardern lived up to her promise? What political concessions has she had to make? And beyond the hype, what does her new style of leadership look like in practice?

An important message from the Premier of Western Australia

 

My fellow West Australians.

As you all know, people over east look down on us. They accuse us of being uneducated, of being a bunch of bogans and of having the worst newspaper in Australia.

The time has come to prove them wrong. Let's show them we know how to read, that we also love books.

I'm therefore pleased to tell you all that Planet Irf Books are extending their sale beyond the end of the last financial year. Indeed, the sale will continue until the end of the Sydney lockdown. The way they manage Covid over there, I estimate that will likely be the year 2,956.

That allows us Westies to grab books at $5 off the marked price. And because the books are second hand, there's no GST. Which makes sense because we never seem to get enough GST anyway.

Plus those Easties at Planet Irf Books will be paying all the postage. That means some Aussie Post truckie will be driving across the Nullarbor to deliver our books at no extra cost.

But most of all, you'll be helping Irf, an otherwise proud Eastie, to raise some much needed dosh so he can move over here, jump into the 50 metre Aqua Jetty pool and do some laps and shed some kilos in my Covid-free electorate. 

So let's take advantage this opportunity to prove our literacy and simultaneously rip off the Easties by buying heaps of books cheaper than the chips at said Aqua Jetty.

Simultaneously. Now that's a big word.

Mark

SOLD Taking the piss of travel writers in this sort-of-memoir

 

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Rare book. One of Paul Theroux's finest and funniest books. PB. 456pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia. Theroux literally takes the piss of himself and the whole profession of travel writing.

In the Washington Post Book World, Sven Birkerts called this exuberant novel "a complex and gripping work of invention and confession . . . I understood again how the prose of a true writer can bring us to a world beyond." 

The book spans almost thirty years in the life of a fictional "Paul Theroux," who moves through young bachelorhood in Africa, in and out of marriage, affairs, and employment, and between continents. It's a wry, worldly, erotic, and deeply moving account of one man's first half century - "among the strongest things Theroux has ever written" (New York Times Book Review).

Jon Lee Anderson reports from Afghanistan

 

Rare book. PB. Excellent condition. 224pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The New Yorker correspondent and author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life shares a series of reports from Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, describing a dangerous world of violence, feudal society, conspiracy, religious fanaticism, hardship, and war.

Lonely Planet's travel anthology

 

Rare book. Excellent condition. PB. 271pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia

Lonely Planet believes good travel writing travels beyond facts and maps - there are stories and inspirations to be shared. This title includes stories from popular Lonely Planet anthologies such as 'On The Edge', 'By The Seat Of My Pants', 'The Kindness of Strangers', 'Tales From Nowhere', and others.

SOLD More humorous travel writing from Eric Newby

 

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Good condition. Cover looks like it has been bent and straightened. PB. 288pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Here, in this selection of the best of Eric Newby's published writings, we learn how to clean out a pigsty in a gale near Cape Horn; what it is like to row 1200 miles down the Ganges, or live behind German lines in occupied Italy; how to brave dress buyers in post-war Edinburgh and in the wilds of Mayfair; deal with terrifying conductresses on the Trans-Siberian Railway; and cycle round Ireland in what was optimistically described as summertime - it actually rained for five months.

'Eric Newby still holds the laurels as the country's wittiest travel writer . . . "A Merry Dance Around the World" is a collection of all the master's best traveller's tales extracted from a lifetime's travel writing. It is an astonishing catalogue of disasters and misunderstandings, but it had me laughing so uncontrollably my wife eventually forbade me from reading it in public' "Sunday Times"

'In the increasingly populous realm of travel writing, Eric Newby has acquired Homeric status . . . The extract from "Love and War in the Apennines," arguably one of the best travel books ever written, shows Eric Newby at his most scintillating, and the chapter from "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" includes the most luminous moment in modern travelling history' "Daily Telegraph"

'Whatever Eric Newby writes I read with uncritical pleasure. The Newby travels are classics of their time' "Financial Times"

'Keeping up with Eric Newby, every breathless puff and pant of it, is worth it all the way. His vitality, which was always more than most people's, gets bigger and his writing richer and funnier' " Observer"

'Newby is an incomparable, shrewd and witty travel writer . . . Immensely enjoyable' John Mortimer, "Mail on Sunday"

'Newby has quite rightly established himself as one of the sharpest, funniest and most boisterously entertaining of all travel writers' " Sunday Telegraph"

SOLD Eric Newby - travel writing at its best

 

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Good condition. PB. 302pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A chronicle of travels, some homely some exotic, from the man who can make a schoolboy holiday in Swanage as colourful as a walk in the Hindu Kush.

Eric Newby's life of travel began in 1919, on pram-ride adventures with his mother into the dark streets of Barnes and the chaotic jungles of Harrods, and progressed to solo, school-bound adventures around the slums of darkest Hammersmith. His interest piqued, Newby's wanderlust snowballed, and his adventures multiplied, as he navigated the London sewer system, bicycled to Italy and meandered the wilds of New York's Broadway. Whether travelling abroad as a high-fashion buyer for a British department store or for pure adventure as a travel writer, even when reluctantly participating in a tiger shoot in India, Newby chronicles his adventures with verve, humour and infectious enthusiasm.

After nine years as the travel editor for the Observer, Newby reluctantly gave up the post, eschewing the new form of human-as-freight travel. However, this change was certainly no pity for his readers, as the latter-day Newby continued on his unwavering quest for fascinating detail and adventure wherever he roamed, whether on two feet or two wheels. ‘A Traveller's Life’ chronicles the incredible adventures of one of the best-loved tour guides in the history of travel writing.

Holocaust tale from the Netherlands

 

Mint condition. PB. 176pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A story of the Holocaust but with a twist that the victim apparently converted to some kind of evangelical Christianity. Here is the publisher's blurb:

This book reads like a novel, but the riveting story it tells is true. Journey with Ernest and Elisabeth from the horror of the Holocaust to salvation in Jesus the Messiah. Not only is this a powerful testimony of how God sustained several Jewish families during the worst nightmare of our time, it is also a tender love story. You won't be able to put it down! 

In case you still believe people who come to Australia on boats are queue-jumpers ...

 

Mint condition. PB. 332pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia. 

An excellent antidote to the hatred too often directed at "boat people". 

A family's sacrifice - A nation's struggle 

In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families set out on perilous journeys in rickety boats to escape communist rule and seek out a better life. Kim Huynh's family was one of them. 

In this unique memoir, Kim traces his parents' precarious lives, from their poor villages in central and southern Vietnam, through relative affluence in Saigon, to their harrowing experiences after the American withdrawal and the fall of Saigon in 1975, which led them to a new life in Australia. 

As Kim explores his parents' stories, he unveils the tragedy and inner strength of ordinary Vietnamese people struggling to survive in a country beset by colonisation and ravaged by war. this gripping story is not only an invaluable piece of political history, but a moving tribute from a son to his parents. 

For fans of Ahn Do's 'the Happiest Refugee' and Pauline Nguyen's 'Secrets of the Red Lantern'.

Indigenous history and governance in one slim volume

 

Rare book. Ex-library. Very good condition. PB. 169pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Examination of political base for protest and action; discusses government and non government institutions and organisations including NAC, NACC, DAA and ATC; land councils and land rights; government policy, including citizenship; race relations from colonization to the present; community development and autonomy.

Traveling through warzones in Africa

 

Rare book. Good condition. PB. 240pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

For ten years Andrew Buckoke wrote articles about Africa for many of the major newspapers including "The Guardian", "The Times" and "The Observer". 

He brings his experience and knowledge of the African continent to bear in a book which attempts to open up this often romanticized and little understood land to the general reader. 

"Fishing in Africa" concentrates interest on the people of the continent rather than the animals, while looking at the ways in which these peoples are governed. 

The author follows the antics of governments, rebels, aid agencies and fellow journalists and while persuing his interest in fishing, travels to areas where few Westerners had ventured.

Travels in Russia's dark heart

 

Mint condition. PB. 352pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The Road of Bonesis the story of Russia's greatest road. For over 200 years, the route of the Vladimirka Road has been at the centre of the nation's history, having witnessed everything from the first human footsteps to the rise of Putin and his oil-rich oligarchy. Tsars, wars, famine and wealth: all have crossed and travelled this road, but no-one has ever told its story.

In pursuit of the sights, sounds and voices both past and present, Jeremy Poolman travels the Vladimirka. Both epic and intimate, The Road of Bones is a record of his travels - but much more. It looks into the hearts and reveals the histories of those whose lives have been changed by what is known by many as simply The Greatest of Roads.

This is a book about life and about death and about the strength of will it takes to celebrate the former while living in the shadow of the latter.

Anecdotal and epic, The Road of Bones follows the author's journey along this road, into the past and back again. The book takes as its compass both the voices of history and those of today and draws a map of the cities and steppes of the Russian people's battered but ultimately indefatigable spirit.

About the author

Jeremy Poolman is a British novelist, biographer and artist. His first novel, Interesting Facts about the State of Arizona, won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, best first book, UK.

He studied at University College School, and Oxford Brookes University.^[1] His work has appeared in The Guardian.^[2] He lives in Cornwall.^[3]

SOLD Diaries of an Indian official in the British Raj

 

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Mint condition. HB. 656pp. $50 including postage anywhere in Australia.

An engrossing narrative of a colonial subjects life contemplating his Imperial masters at the height of colonialism in India; based upon the first eight years of his life-long diary. 

Amar Singh, a Rajput nobleman and officer in the Indian Army, kept a diary for 44 years from 1898, when he was twenty, until his death in 1942. 

In it he writes about the Jodhpur court, the Imperial Cadet Corps, and the British Expeditionary Force in China during the Boxer rebellion. 

A century before hybridity, he constructs a hybrid self, an Edwardian officer cum gentleman and a martial Rajput cum manor lord. 

With the diary acting as alter ego and best friend, Amar Singh resists becoming a coolie for the raj when he finds the British to be racist masters as well as friends. 

He writes and reads extensively to keep himself amused, he says, and to avoid the boredom of princedom and raj philistinism. 

Here the authors focus on the first eight years of Amar Singhs diary (1898-1905), offering a rare and intimate glimpse into British colonialism from the point of view of a colonial subject. Illustrated with fifty photographs and facsimiles from Amar Singhs readings.

SOLD An hilarious travelogue of modern Turkey

 

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OK folks. I have read this book twice. It is hilarious and irreverent. At the same time, it is also very respectful of Turkish culture whilst poking fun at its political elite. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 306pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Inspired by a dusty fez in his parents' attic, Jeremy Seal set off in 1993 to trace the astonishing history of this cone-shaped hat. 

Soon, the quintessentially Turkish headgear became the key to understanding a country beset by contradictions.

About the author

Jeremy Seal is a writer and broadcaster. His first book, A Fez of the Heart, was shortlisted for the 1995 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He is also the author of The Snakebite Survivors' Club and The Wreck at Sharpnose Point, and presenter of Channel 4's ‘Wreck Detectives’. He lives in Bath with his wife and daughters.

SOLD Travels in Indonesia

 

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Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 280pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Norman Lewis was eighty-three years old when in 1991 he embarked on a series of three arduous journeys into the most contentious corners of Indonesia: into the extreme western edge of Sumatra, into East Timor and Irian Jaya. 

He never drops his guard, reporting only on what he can observe, and using his well-honed tools of irony, humour and restraint to assess the power of the ruling Javanese generals who for better or worse took over the 300-year old dominion of the exploitative Dutch colonial regime. 

An Empire of the East is the magnificent swan-song of Britain's greatest travel writer.

Graham Greene called Lewis "one of the best"; Pico Iyer said he's "one of the world's last unguarded secrets"; and Anthony Burgess said "his prose is almost edible." 

And yeah, he's pretty good. 

Lewis visits deep into the leafy and political jungles of Sumatra and East Timor, describing the lurking perils of Indonesian restaurants that cook their food once a week and political land mines as well. 

"Empire" is a scholarly and well-written treatment of Indonesia.

How to make reporting from war zones laugh-out-loud funny

 

You'd better be quick for this one. It will go like a flash! PJ O'Rourke is America's finest satirist. This book is a set of his dispatches from various war zones when he was foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine. What I love about O'Rourke is that although he is politically conservative, he loves poking fun at both himself and his own side of the ideological divide.

Good condition. PB. 221pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A re-issue of the original classic in which P.J. O'Rourke takes on the role of tour guide with hilarious results.

P.J. O'Rourke travels to hellholes around the globe in Holidays in Hell, looking for trouble, the truth, and a good time. After casually sight-seeing in war-torn Lebanon and being pepper-gassed in Korea, P.J. checks out the night life in communist Poland and spends the Christmas holidays in El Salvador.

Taking a long look at Nicaragua, P.J. asks, Is Nicaragua a Bulgaria with marimba bands or just a misunderstood Massachusetts with Cuban military advisors?; has a close encounter with a Philippine army officer he describes as powerful-looking in a short, compressed way, like an attack hamster; and concludes, Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun.

About the author

P.J. O'Rourke is the author of 13 books, including Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance, both of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. His most recent book is Holidays in Heck.

SOLD Life in an Iraqi village

 

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Very good condition. PB. 368pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A delightful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, this is an account of Fernea's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. This volume gives a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.

"A most enjoyable book abouut [Muslim women]--simple, dignified, human, colorful, sad and humble as the life they lead." --Muhsin Mahdi, Jewett Professor of Arabic Literature, Harvard Unversity. 

SOLD The wealthy colonialists of Britain

 

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Good condition. PB. 240pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The late Dr Percival Spear (1901-1982) taught history at St Stephen's College, Delhi, and was the author of The Oxford History of Modern India 1740-1975.

An objective but not reverential biography of the prophet of Islam

 

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

A life of the prophet Muhammad by best-selling religious writer Karen Armstrong

Most people in the West know very little about the prophet Muhammad. The acclaimed religious writer Karen Armstrong has written a biography which will give us a more accurate and profound understanding of Islam and the people who adhere to it so strongly. Muhammad also offers challenging comparisons with the two religions most closely related to it - Judaism and Christianity.

Muhammad was born in 570 C.E. Over the course of the following sixty years, he built a thriving spiritual community and laid out the foundations of a religion that has changed the course of world history. There is more historical data available about his life than that of the founder of any other major faith, and yet, particularly in the West, his is a consistently misunderstood story.

An acclaimed authority on religious and spiritual issues, Karen Armstrong offers a balanced portrait of this revered figure. Through comparison with other prophets and mystics, she illuminates Muhammad's spiritual ideas; she uses the facts of his life, from which Muslims have drawn instruction for centuries, to make the tenets of Islam clear and accessible for modern readers of all faiths. This vivid and detailed biography strips away centuries of distortion and myth to reveal the man behind the religion.

Karen Armstrong, bestselling author, scholar, and journalist, is among the world's foremost commentators on religious history and culture. Post-9/11, she has become a crucial advocate for mutual understanding between the world's major faiths. Her books include Buddha: A Biography, The Battle for God, and Islam: A Short History.

"Respectful without being reverential, knowledgeable without being pedantic, and, above all, readable. It succeeds because [Armstrong] brings Muhammad to life as a fully rounded human being." -The Economist

SOLD Children of British India

 

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Mint condition. HB. 362pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The children of the raj are legion, yet their story has never previously been told. 

Like Katie Hickman's 'Daughters of Britannia' it is dramatic and traumatic involving dangerous voyages, vivid experiences in exotic places and profound emotions springing from the sudden, unexplained and lengthy separation of children from their parents. 

'We Indian children', the novelist Thackeray called himself when packed off back to England aged 4. 

The tragic plight of such youngers is epitomised by two well-known fictional characters. Punch in Kipling's semi-autobiographical 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep' is bereft of his parents and victimised by his guardian during a five-year exile from India, and Mary Lennox in 'The Secret Garden' is orphaned and transplanted abruptly from a garden full of scarlet hibiscus to a bleak Yorkshire moor. 

Brendon's evocative, at times heart-tugging book, runs from the 18th century and the East India Company, through the Afghan wars, the Indian mutiny and the more settled era of the Queen Empress, and culminates in the conflict leading to Britain's hurried exit in 1947. 

Its subject is the young progeny of traders, soldiers, civil servants, missionaries, planters, engineers and what should be done with them. 

Until the coming of air travel these children often only saw their parents every few years. Then there were the children, often half caste, born of Anglo-Indian marriages and affairs. Sent back to Britain they were often reviled as 'darkies', 'a touch of the tar-brush'. 

And then there were the children educated in India. Brendon reveals appalling stories of abuse at the hands of servants. What frequently unites Brendon's wildly different subjects is their loneliness--drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs and interviews, she portrays children who had to discipline themselves to adapt (often ingeniously) to unfamiliar cultures, far away from family and forced to spend term time in boarding schools and holidays with unfamiliar families.

Hilarious travel journalism

 

Very funny and in very good condition. PB. 241pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Collection of humorous articles on various topics, by a well-known journalist. Some of the stories have previously been published in the 'Sydney Morning Herald' and the London 'Daily Telegraph' and in 'Basking in Beirut', the author's previous collection of articles.