A reader on South East Asian Islam

 

Mint condition. PB. 389pp. Amazon selling this for over $40 plus postage. Our special price is $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Islam is a major religion in Southeast Asia, with Indonesian Muslims comprising the largest Muslim population in the world. Events and developments since 11 September 2001 have added greater attention to Islam and its adherents in this part of the world.

This general survey of Islam in Southeast Asia is intended to inform, explain and update readers about the more significant aspects of Islam in Southeast Asia, then and now. These include the following: the geographical origins and sources by which the faith spread in this region; the social, economic and political profiles of the Muslim communities; relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and between Muslims and the State; the strands and trends that shapes the role of Islam and the Muslims in the national body politic; and the challenges confronting Muslims in confronting the vicissitudes of their lives in this era of rapid change, characterized by modernization, capitalism, secularization and globalization.          

The discussion will begin with an overview of the broad picture of Islam and the Muslims in the region as a whole, covering both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries. This will be followed by case-study analysis of Islam and the Muslims in individual countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.           

Given the difficulty of writing on such a complex and contentious topic, this book attempts to present the subject matter in a manner that is sufficiently objective to scholars and yet simple and accessible enough to be readily understood by ordinary readers. 

Biography of a Jewish convert to Shi'ism in Azerbaijan during WWII

 

Mint condition. PB. 464pp. Amazon retails for $26 plus postage. Our special price $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

'Mixing memory with desire, this marvelous and original book once more reminds us of ways through which the imagination becomes a refuge from the uncontrollable cruelties of reality.'

Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany.

Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.

But Lev's life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck–also a friend of both Freud's and Einstein's–was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his "true" identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound.

Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev's story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject's life. Reiss's quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.

As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum's deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.

The Chechen war and Putin's slaughterhouse

 Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 576pp. Amazon selling this edition for $127. plus postage. Our special price is $40 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Written in passionate prose, this is the story of the one million Chechens who, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, found themselves cast as the enemy of the new Russian state. Compelled to assert their freedom and individualism, they faced the huge Russian army in a one-sided war which destroyed their land, their homes, and their families. This updated account also covers the role of Vladimir Putin in the continuing struggle.

Travels in Mongolia 1902

 

Mint condition. PB. 170pp. $20 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.

An Australian refugee memoir

 

Mint condition. PB. 272pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In 1978, following a dramatic escape from war torn Vietnam, Tracy Vo's parents boarded a leaky boat not knowing what their future held or whether they would live. The couple had fled Vietnam under the cover of darkness, exchanged wedding rings en route to Malaysia, then sold them and their scant possessions to feed themselves and their 10 relatives on the journey. They were declared refugees.

Now, almost 40 years later, their decision to flee Vietnam has been rewarded by a happy and successful life for their family in Australia, the country they are now proud to call home. Here, their daughter Tracy reflects on that life changing journey and the amazing life it created for them in Australia. Today, Tracy is a successful Channel 9 journalist who has chosen to return to her family home to care for her family as they enter old age. Her story shows the extraordinary bravery of her parents and the many refugees like them who now call Australia home.

The best travel writing on Nepal

 

Mint condition. HB. 512pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia

In April 2015, catastrophic earthquakes left Nepal devastated. Over 7,000 people lost their lives and more than twice as many were injured. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless and UNESCO World Heritage sites were destroyed.

HOUSE OF SNOW is the biggest, most comprehensive and most beautiful collection of writing about Nepal in print. It includes over 50 excerpts of fiction and non-fiction inspired by the breathtaking landscapes and rich cultural heritage of this fascinating country.

Here are explorers and mountaineers, poets and political journalists, national treasures and international stars such as Michael Palin and Jon Krakauer, Laxmi Prasad Devkota and ManjushreeThapa – all hand-picked by well-known authors and scholars of Nepali literature including Samrat Upadhyay, Michael Hutt, Isabella Tree and Thomas Bell.

SOLD Travels through the Hindu Kush mountains

 

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PB. 400pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

High up in the Hindu Kush, between the ancient pagan Kalash people and the new medievalists of the Taliban, a charismatic young Spaniard, Jordi Magraner, made his home, mastering the local languages and customs before meeting his death in the most mysterious way. In this magisterial book, Gabi Martinez sets off in Jordi's footsteps to the land of the giants in order to try to solve the riddle of this murder and of Jordi's life.

Jordi Magraner was a brilliant student of the natural world, whose lab was the ravine and the scarp and the tent. His observational investigations led him to places where the legendary barmanu had been sighted, and he began to develop a thesis about the life of the wild man. His passion for pursuit and discovery took him onto ever more perilous terrain in the Pakistani-Afghan borderlands. And, one by one, Jordi turned his back on the Europeans who sought to assist him, preferring instead to entrust his safety to an Afghan youth fleeing the Taliban, and to a wondrous working dog called Fjord.

Jordi sought other rewards, and followed a winding, rocky path, down which Gabi Martinez resourcefully tracks him on this enthralling journey of detection and adventure in the Himalayas - where the truth is never as clear and pristine as the majestic mountains and the fast-flowing streams.

Pakistan - playing with fire?

 

HB. Mint condition. 352pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

 A volatile nation at the heart of major cultural, political, and religious conflicts in the world today, Pakistan commands our attention. Yet more than six decades after the country’s founding as a Muslim democracy, it continues to struggle over its basic identity, alliances, and direction. In Playing with Fire, acclaimed journalist Pamela Constable peels back layers of contradiction and confusion to reveal the true face of modern Pakistan.

In this richly reported and movingly written chronicle, Constable takes us on a panoramic tour of contemporary Pakistan, exploring the fears and frustrations, dreams and beliefs, that animate the lives of ordinary citizens in this nuclear-armed nation of 170 million. From the opulent, insular salons of the elite to the brick quarries where soot-covered workers sell their kidneys to get out of debt, this is a haunting portrait of a society riven by inequality and corruption, and increasingly divided by competing versions of Islam.

Beneath the façade of democracy in Pakistan, Constable reveals the formidable hold of its business, bureaucratic, and military elites—including the country’s powerful spy agency, the ISI. This is a society where the majority of the population feels powerless, and radical Islamist groups stoke popular resentment to recruit shock troops for global jihad. Writing with an uncommon ear for the nuances of this conflicted culture, Constable explores the extent to which faith permeates every level of Pakistani society—and the ambivalence many Muslims feel about the role it should play in the life of the nation.

Both an empathic and alarming look inside one of the world’s most violent and vexing countries, Playing with Fire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand modern Pakistan and its momentous role on today’s global stage.

SOLD Travels through Laos

 

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RARE BOOK. HB. Mint condition. 284pp. Amazon is selling this book for $141. I'm selling it for $35.

Nestled between Vietnam to the east, Myanmar and China to the north, Thailand to the west and Cambodia to the south, Laos has long suffered from the depredations of its larger neighbors. But the biggest bully in its history was the United States which, starting in 1964, carried on a "secret war" against Laos. By the time of the ceasefire in February 1973, Laos had become the most heavily bombed nation in the history of the world.

When renowned travel writer Dervla Murphy went to Laos in 1997, she discovered a country that had only just opened its borders to the West. What she found was a country where the people-kind, gentle, welcoming-more than compensate for everything that can go wrong. But she also discovered that the persisting problems bequeathed by its recent past are tragic and other problems threaten its immediate future. A series of chance meetings left her with a profound sense of a beautiful country and a unique culture threatened-once again-by the extreme pressures of the modern world.

SOLD Travels into the heart of dangerous Borneo

 

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Very good condition. PB. 208pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The story of a 1983 journey to the center of Borneo, which no expedition had attempted since 1926. O'Hanlon, accompanied by friend and poet James Fenton and three native guides brings wit and humor to a dangerous journey.

Paul Keating on the Asia-Pacific

 

Mint condition. HB. 310pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

During the period of Paul Keating's Prime Ministership of Australia, relations with the countries of Asia were deepened. This insightful and controversial book examines the development of APEC, relationships with Indonesia, and with countries of the South Pacific. It also examines questions of Australia's national identity.

SOLD Travels through Myanmar

 

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Very rare book. Mint condition. PB. 265pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This expression of the pain of Burma uses novelistic techniques to weave together the patient endurance of its stricken inhabitants, together with their fragility and immense charm. 

Through his studies of the lives of the individual Burmese whom he encounters, the author makes us feel the weight of the regime under which they labour, from the girls who work on the building-sites under appallingly exploitative conditions to the drunken pirates who profit from the chaos.

About the author

Canadian Rory MacLean is one of Britain's most expressive and adventurous travel writers. His twelve books include the UK top tens Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Berlin: Imagine a City, a book of the year and 'the most extraordinary work of history I've ever read' according to the Washington Post. He has won awards from the Canada Council and Arts Council of England and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. His works – according to the late John Fowles – are among those that 'marvellously explain why literature still lives'. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he divides his time between the UK, Berlin and Toronto.

SOLD From foreign correspondent to prisoner in Singapore

 

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

Two young men are at my flanks. A third is stepping from the shadows. I'm being mugged, I think. I'm being mugged in the low-crime capital of Asia.

It is July 2008 at 8pm and one of Australian ABC-TV's best-known foreign correspondents, Peter Lloyd, is being arrested on the streets of Singapore. And so begins a dramatic and highly publicised ordeal.

In the years before this turning point in his life, it was Peter Lloyd doing the publicising. He had stood among the gruesome human wreckage laid out in an improvised outdoor mortuary after the Bali Bombing; joined Thailand's disaster recovery workers collecting the bloated flotsam of the Boxing Day Tsunami. And he was there for the worst atrocity in Pakistan's history, a shocking suicide bombing attempt on Benazir Bhutto's life, two months before she was finally assassinated.

These horrific events became the stuff of recurring nightmares, a private agony that took a huge toll and led to a personal disintegration.

After his arrest, Peter Lloyd became embroiled in Singapore's judicial system and, as Prisoner 12988, suffered the small and large humiliations of prison life. But he is far from bitter. He was supported by many of his ABC colleagues and by a network of close friends; he was comforted by his loving gay partner and by his tirelessly loyal former wife.

To survive in gaol, he entered it with the mindset of a seasoned journalist on assignment. He tells his Inside Story with compelling candour, great warmth and a very sharp wit.

Glenn A Baker's travel best

 

Very good condition. PB. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Glenn A Baker brings us his wry observations and sense of humour as he travels to Cuba and meets Castro, considers the moral dilemma of travelling to Burma, attends a Naadam, a festival of horse racing, archery and wrestling in Mongolia or waxes lyrical over the streets of Slovenia, to name but a few of his adventures.

The Diggers who defended Malaya and Singapore during WWII

 

Ex-library. Mint condition. PB. 145pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The Illustrated history of Australians in Malaya and Singapore, December 1941 – February 1942, with biographies of key figures.

Stalin and the new Russia

 

Mint condition. HB. 304pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

From the first publisher granted access to Stalin's personal archive, a provocative and insightful portrait of modern Russia—the most compelling since David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb.

To most Americans, Russia remains as enigmatic today as it was during the Iron Curtain era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country had an opportunity to face its tortured past. In Inside the Stalin Archives, Jonathan Brent asks, why didn't this happen? Why are the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion sold openly in the lobby of the State Duma? Why are archivists under surveillance and phones still tapped? Why does Stalin, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people, remain popular enough to appear on boxes of chocolate sold in Moscow's airport?

Brent draws on fifteen years of unprecedented access to high-level Soviet Archives to answer these questions. He shows us a Russia where, in 1992, used toothbrushes were sold on the sidewalks, while now shops are filled with luxury goods and the streets are jammed with Mercedes. Stalin's specter hovers throughout, and in the book's crescendo Brent takes us deep into the dictator's personal papers to glimpse the dark heart of the new Russia. Both cultural history and personal memoir, Inside the Stalin Archives is a deeply felt and vivid portrait of Russia in the twenty-first century.

Tracking the Gobi Desert in the steps of Genghis Khan

 

Excellent condition. PB. 224pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

The Gobi desert in Mongolia has long been considered a wasteland of searing heat, polar cold, and brutal sandstorms. For seventy years, it was all but barred to outsiders by Mongolia's position as a Soviet-dominated buffer state between Russia and China. 

The collapse of communism gave John Man a long-awaited chance to travel through the Gobi. Retracing the steps of early explorers, living with herdsmen, and drawing on the most recent scientific work, he has now created the first accessible portrait of this little-known wilderness.

Man describes the Gobi's national parks (one of which is the second largest in the world), its snowcapped mountains, sandstone canyons, towering dunes, and "singing sands." He tells us about its ephemeral snow leopards, its desert bears (only some of which survive), and the world's only species of wild horse. 

He relates exciting stories of earlier expeditions, many of them American-led. In the 1920s, American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews discovered the first known dinosaur eggs in the legendary Flaming Cliffs. 

And in the 1990s Michael Novacek, of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, led teams that discovered a treasure-trove of dinosaur fossils far exceeding Andrews' finds. 

In concluding chapters Man captures the ancient land of the Gobi on the brink of change, as research intensifies, the population increases, the herdsmen become owners of motorbikes -- and the pressure on wildlife grows.

About the author

John Anthony Garnet Man is a British historian and travel writer. His special interests are China, Mongolia and the history of written communication. He takes particular pleasure in combining historical narrative with personal experience.

He studied German and French at Keble College, Oxford, before doing two postgraduate courses, a diploma in the History and Philosophy of Science at Oxford and Mongolian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, completing the latter in 1968. After working in journalism with Reuters and in publishing with Time-Life Books, he turned to writing, with occasional forays into film, TV and radio.

In the 1990s, he began a trilogy on the three major revolutions in writing: writing itself, the alphabet and printing with movable type. This has so far resulted in two books, Alpha Beta and The Gutenberg Revolution, both republished in 2009. The third, on the origin of writing, is on hold, because it depends on access to Iraq.

He returned to the subject of Mongolia with Gobi: Tracking the Desert, the first book on the region since the 1920s. Work in Mongolia led to Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, which has so far appeared in 18 languages. Attila the Hun and Kublai Khan: The Mongol King Who Remade China completed a trilogy on Asian leaders. A revised edition of his book on Genghis Khan, with the results of an expedition up the mountain on which he is supposed to be buried, was upcoming in autumn 2010.

The Terracotta Army coincided with the British Museum exhibition (September 2007- April 2008). This was followed by The Great Wall. The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan combines history and leadership theory. Xanadu: Marco Polo and the Discovery of the East was published in autumn 2009, and Samurai: The Last Warrior, the story of Saigō Takamori's doomed 1877 rebellion against the Japanese emperor, was published in February 2011.

In 2007 John Man was awarded Mongolia's Friendship Medal for his contributions to UK-Mongolian relations.

SOLD A lone Kiwi travels across Mongolia

 

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Rare book. Good condition. PB. 176pp. $20 including postage across Australia

While Ian Robinson was born and raised in rural New Zealand, he's covered a lot of ground since then. He's done it the hard way too - backpacking through South America, China, Tibet, Nepal and India. 

In 1992 he was living in London, and was seized with the idea of travelling across Mongolia, and despite opposition from friends, family and so-called 'experts' who claimed it was impossible, he went on to became the first westerner to cross Mongolia alone on horseback. 

His battle to find guides, horses and a safe place to sleep in some of the world's wildest and most inhospitable surroundings is an extraordinary testament to his courage, ingenuity and determination. 

Gantsara - alone across Mongolia tells the fascinating, sometimes frightening and often hilarious story of his amazing journey. 

From falling in love with an enchanting girl in Ulan Bator to being chased across the steppes by drunken bandits, his story is never dull and is full of the affection and respect he developed for the warm and vital people he came to know and love along the way

SOLD Travels through Tibet

 

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

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.