PJ O'Rourke pokes fun at himself and the world in this collection of his early journalism

 

Mint condition. PB. 368pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

P.J. O’Rourke celebrates his first twenty-five years of journalism with ‘a quarter of a century of previously uncollected fulminations, diatribes, philippics, animadversions, bullyrags, readings of the riot act, middle-finger flag-downs, scoffings, slander, calumnies and licks of the rough side of the tongue’. 

‘This career-spanning anthology condenses one of the most provocative and entertaining careers in twentieth-century journalism . . . P.J. O’Rourke remains the funniest man in print. This book confirms that he has been much longer than we thought’ Ikon 

‘P.J. O’Rourke is routinely billed as “American’s premier political humorist” and, for once, it is a claim that is difficult to dispute . . . few other humorists rival O’Rourke for simple comic density’ Guardian 

‘It is not fanciful to think of him as the heir to Swift and Orwell . . . journalism as relentlessly funny as it is deceptively shrewd’ Melody Maker ‘Age and Guile contains enough firecracker wit to uphold his reputation as America’s greatest prose comedian’ Financial Times 

‘O’Rourke remains the wittiest member of the herd’ Daily Telegraph

The history of immersion journalism

 

Very rare book. Very good condition. PB. 336pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

New Journalism ... burst on to the American print media scene in the mid-'60s before withering slowly as the 1970s mired itself in detente, oversized clothing and stagflation. In the end, New Journalism vanished - a victim of tighter economic times, the relentless onslaught of television, the VCR and the stylistic excesses of the form itself.

For those unfamiliar with New Journalism, the rubric came to be applied to pieces of writing in popular magazines such as and that ran at great length, packed with detail, the writer's subjective observations and even - in the case of the man who came to be seen as the avatar of the form, Tom Wolfe - extended applications of onomatopoeia.

As Marc Weingarten shows in this thorough and highly readable history of long-form "immersion" journalism, what came to be known as New Journalism had in fact been around well before the 1960s (the term was invented by Wolfe, ever the self-promoter, in 1973). He nominates Jonathan Swift's satirical assault on Britain's occupation of Ireland, , written in 1729, as perhaps the first example of the Gonzo style later associated with Hunter S. Thompson.

(taken from a review published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 2 January 2006. You can read more here.)

Embarrassing tyrannies

 

Mint condition. PB. 346pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Collected here are sixty-two powerful and often terrifying pieces selected from Index on Censorship's twenty-five years' worth of issues documenting and condemning tyranny.

The writings, many by such renowned authors as Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, and Julio Cortazar, cover the issues with careful even-handedness. Ariel Dorfman writes from the experience of the Chilean dictatorship and imagines a training course for salesmen of torture equipment; Alexander Solzhenitsyn has a fragment of poetry recalling his own period in a labour camp in Kazakhstan; Wale Soginka writes powerfully in defense of Salman Rushdie―a truly disturbing piece.

A great tribute to Index's achievements, this collection celebrates without being self-congratulatory. Its contributors provide elegant testimony to the human spirit's capacity for survival and its continuing struggle for freedom.

A collection of ancient and modern journalism

 

Good condition. PB. 752pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

What was it like to be caught in the firestorm that destroyed Pompeii? To have dinner with Attila the Hun? To watch the charge of the Light Brigade? To see the Titanic slide beneath the waves? John Carey's best-selling Faber Book of Reportage draws its eyewitness account from memoirs, travel books and newspapers. This is history with the varnish removed.

'A quite stunning collection. There are descriptions in this book so fresh that they sear themselves into the imagination.' Jeremy Paxman

About the author

John Carey is Emeritus Professor at Oxford University. His books include studies of John Donne, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, as well as The Intellectuals and the Masses, What Good Are the Arts? and a life of William Golding. His memoir, The Unexpected Professor, was a Sunday Times bestseller.

Memoir of avoiding South Asian marriage

 

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

An affectionate, often hilarious, memoir of growing up in London in the 1970s in an Indian household, and avoiding an arranged marriage.

‘From the age of fourteen, I was aware my parents expected me to have an arranged marriage, a big Bollywood wedding. There was just one hitch: nobody asked me.’

For Sushi Das, growing up in 1970s London was a culturally messed-up time. Feminists were telling women they could be whatever they wanted, skinheads were yelling at dark-skinned foreigners to go home and The Boomtown Rats were singing about ‘Lookin’ after Number 1.’

While Sushi was fabricating intricate lies and plotting harebrained schemes to get to the pub and meet ‘undesirable elements’ – boys – her parents were on the hunt for a respectable Indian doctor for her to marry. But how do you turn your back on centuries of tradition without trashing your family’s honour? How do you break free of your parents’ stranglehold without casting off their embrace? And how do you explain to your strict dad why there’s a boy smoking in his living room and another one lurking in his garden?

Breaking free meant migrating to the other side of the world, only to find that life in Australia had unexpected consequences. This is an intelligent, often hilarious memoir and a fascinating look at one of the oldest traditions of Eastern culture, which aims to join two families in economic prosperity, but whose reality is not always so blissful.

About the author

Sushi Das is an award-winning British/Australian journalist of Indian origin who worked for The Age newspaper for 22 years. She held various roles including news editor, columnist and opinion editor. Educated and raised in London, she migrated to Australia in 1991 and began her career as a news reporter at Australian Associated Press. Her work, which often focuses on race relations, culture clash and equality for women, has been recognised with two Melbourne Press Club Quill awards, including Best Columnist. She is an experienced public speaker and currently works as a freelance columnist and writing consultant and as a researcher for RMIT ABC Fact Check. Her memoir Deranged Marriage has been taught as a school text at Victorian secondary schools.

SOLD A Muslim woman discovers her Jewish roots

 

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Mint condition. PB. 264pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A classic war-time travelogue

 

Good condition. PB. 224pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Hailed as Newby's 'masterpiece', Love and War in the Apennines is the gripping real-life story of Newby's imprisonment and escape from an Italian prison camp during World War II. 

After the Italian Armistice of 1943, Eric Newby escaped from the prison camp in which he'd been held for a year. He evaded the German army by hiding in the caves and forests of Fontanellato, in Italy's Po Valley. 

Against this picturesque backdrop, he was sheltered for three months by an informal network of Italian peasants, who fed, supported and nursed him, before his eventual recapture.

‘Love and War in the Apennines’ is Newby's tribute to the selfless and courageous people who were to be his saviours and companions during this troubled time and of their bleak and unchanging way of life. Of the cast of idiosyncratic characters, most notable was the beautiful local girl on a bike who would teach him the language, and eventually help him escape; two years later they were married and would spend the rest of their lives as co-adventurers. 

Part travelogue, part escape story and part romance, this is a mesmerising account of wisdom, courage, humour and adventure, and tells the story of the early life of a man who would become one of Britain's best-loved literary adventurers.

SOLD Taxi rides and other travel adventures in India's largest city

 

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Very rare book. Mint condition. HB. 301pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Joe Roberts and his wife decided to spend the winter in Calcutta, they wanted to challenge the false impressions that Westerners have of the city. This informative history of the city mixed with the author's personal account intends to recast Calcutta in a positive light.

Travels through Surinam jungle

 

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

Perched above Brazil on the shoulder of South America, Surinam is a land of myth and magic. Once traded to the Dutch by the English in return for Manhattan, it is now home to the largest tract of pristine rainforest left on earth. 

Andrew Westoll first fell under Surinam's spell as a young biologist, studying monkeys deep inside its primordial jungles. Five years later he returned, determined to chart the human, historical and environmental legacies of this surprising, little-known land. 

What he found was a country poised on the brink of profound change- a nation facing either ecological catastrophe or salvation. 

Westoll explores Surinam's bloody past, the allure of its wild places, the legends and rituals of its extraordinary people. 

An honest and beautiful writer he conjures a place of golden light and impenetrable shadow, of long-held secrets and sacred stories. And in the end he uncovers a nation that- like Westoll himself- is still in search of its own destiny.

SOLD Vikram Seth hitchhikes through Xinjiang and Tibet

 

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Rare book. Reasonable condition. PB. 178pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

After two years as a postgraduate student at Nanjing University in China, Vikram Seth hitch-hiked back to his home in New Delhi, via Tibet.  From Heaven Lake is the story of his remarkable journey and his encounters with nomadic Muslims, Chinese officials, Buddhists and others.

About the author

Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.

During the course of his doctorate studies at Stanford, he did his field work in China and translated Hindi and Chinese poetry into English. He returned to Delhi via Xinjiang and Tibet which led to a travel narrative From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983) which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

SOLD Travels through Tibet

 

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Very rare book. PB. 220pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

SOLD Bettina Selby rides through Turkey and the Middle East

 

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Rare book. Good condition. PB. 292pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Pilgrims and visitors have entered Jerusalem in many ways. Some have swaggered in triumphantly in chariots, others humbly on foot or on an as, and today many arrive lolling back in package-holiday coaches.
Bettina Selby did it the hard way, on a bicycle called Evans, having followed the Crusaders' routes across Europe and through Turkey and Syria to Israel. Riding to Jerusalem combines the author's perceptions and reflections with her sense of humour and relish of adventure.

A 20th century travel classic in Brazil

 

Rare book. Good condition. PB. 384pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In the summer of 1925 Colonel Fawcett - soldier, spy and legendary explorer - embarked on a journey into the dark and uncharted heart of Brazil in search of the lost 'City of Z'. He was never seen again. 

Rumours abounded - that Fawcett had been killed by Indians or wild animals or that he had lost his memory and become chief of a cannibal tribe - and many became obsessed with discovering what had become of him. 

In 1932, when "The Times" advertised for 'guns' to join an expedition to find Fawcett, the lure was too great for a young Peter Fleming and he immediately signed up, intending to send dazzling dispatches from the jungle. 

The expedition set out from Sao Paulo and, following tributaries of the Amazon, headed to Fawcett's last-known position. 

What followed was, in Fleming's words, 'a venture for which Rider Haggard might have written the plot and Conrad designed the scenery'. 

As the expedition forged its way deeper into the Amazon, disagreements fractured the group and the entire adventure ended in a chaotic race to be the first to report back home. 

Though the fate of Colonel Fawcett remains a mystery, Peter Fleming's wild escapade in the heart of Brazil has become one of the 20th century's best-loved travel classics.

SOLD Travel humour and misadventure

 

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Mint condition. PB. 200pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

A rolling stone may gather no moss, but one thing it does gather is funny stories, as this collection of goofy travel essays shows. The perfect trip, where nothing goes wrong, is surely not the memorable trip, in which "everything" goes wrong and one lives to tell the tale--and laugh about it.

Where hasn't Paul Theroux been? A collection of travel writing

 

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

Paul Theroux's first collection of essays and articles devoted entirely to travel writing, FRESH AIR FIEND touches down on five continents and floats through most seas in between to deliver a literary adventure of the first order, with the incomparable Paul Theroux as a guide. From the crisp quiet of a solitary week spent in the snowbound Maine woods to the expectant chaos of Hong Kong on the eve of the Hand-over, Theroux demonstrates how the traveling life and the writing life are intimately connected. His journeys in remote hinterlands and crowded foreign capitals provide the necessary perspective to "become a stranger" in order to discover the self. A companion volume to SUNRISE WITH SEAMONSTERS, FRESH AIR FIEND is the ultimate good read for anyone fascinated by travel in the wider world or curious about the life of one of our most passionate travelers.

Paul Theroux paddles the Pacific Islands

 

Good condition. PB. 528pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Renowned travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux has been many places in his life and tried almost everything. But this trip in and around the lands of the Pacific may be his boldest, most fascinating yet. From New Zealand's rain forests, to crocodile-infested New Guinea, over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors, daring weather and coastlines, he travels by Kayak wherever the winds take him--and what he discovers is the world to explore and try to understand.

SOLD Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar

 

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Mint condition. PB. 288pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This 19th-century autobiography offers a rare inside look at the society surrounding a sultan's palace. A real-life princess in exile recalls her vanished world of harems, slave trading, and court intrigues.

Return to an era when Zanzibar was ruled by sultans, and enter a vanished world of harems, slave trading, and court intrigues. In this insider's story, a sultan's daughter who fled her gilded cage offers a compelling look at nineteenth-century Arabic and African royal life. After years of exile in Europe, the former princess wrote this fascinating memoir as a legacy for her children and a warm reminiscence of her island home.

Born Salamah bint Said, Princess of Zanzibar, in 1844, author Emily Ruete grew up in a harem with scores of siblings. The royal family maintained its fabulous wealth and luxury with a robust traffic in ivory, spices, and human bondage. Ruete ventures beyond the palace, into the city and plantations where European traders, missionaries, and colonists exercised a growing influence.

After her dramatic elopement with a German trader, Ruete attained the perspective to form a comparison of the lives of women in Muslim society with those of their European contemporaries. Originally published in 1886, this remarkable autobiography will captivate readers interested in Zanzibar and Eastern Africa as well as students of Arabic, Islam, and women's studies.

About the Author

"Ruete could be the subject of a thrilling romance," enthused Publishers Weekly of this author, who was born in 1840 as Salme, Princess of Oman and Zanzibar. As a 16-year-old, Ruete fled from her cloistered existence to Germany, where she found the freedom to marry her secret lover. Ruete wrote this colorful and informative memoir to introduce her children to their African heritage.

SOLD A Sydney-sider travels through Turkey

 

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Rare book. Excellent condition. PB. 370pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

... a portrait of a country and a people on the edge, posing eternal questions about friendship, identity and how many carpets one man can possibly need.

About the author

Brendan Shanahan is a writer based in Sydney and Las Vegas. He writes regularly for various publications internationally and is the author of The Secret Life of the Gold Coast (2004) and In Turkey I am Beautiful (2008). The latter was described as 'laugh out loud funny' by the Sydney Morning Herald, named 'one of the best travel books ever' by the Sun Herald and listed in the year's 10 best non-fiction works by ABC Radio National.

SOLD Historical fiction from Amitav Ghosh

 

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Mint condition. PB. 404pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Once upon a time, an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out as an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors.
 
Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagine, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In an Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell.

SOLD Asian identities in Australia

 

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PB. 323pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The presence of Asians within Australia continues to be represented in the media as a problem for social cohesion, and a source of panic. This book explores this controversial topic in contemporary Australian society and culture. For the first time in the post-Hanson era, it looks at how Australia and Asia are already intertwined.