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.

SOLD Memoir of one of the world's great chefs

 

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PB. 214pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Sous Chef takes you behind the swinging doors of a busy restaurant kitchen, putting you in chef's shoes for an intense, high-octane twenty-four hours. Follow him from the moment he opens the kitchen in the morning, as he guides you through the meticulous preparation, the camaraderie in the hours leading up to service and the adrenalin-rush as the orders start coming in. Thrilling, addictive and bursting with mouth-watering detail, Sous Chef will leave you breathless and awestruck - walking into a restaurant will never be the same again.

About the Author

Michael Gibney began working in restaurants at the age of sixteen and assumed his first Sous Chef position at twenty-two. He moved up to Executive Sous Chef while at Tavern on the Green in New York, where he managed an eighty-person staff.

Over the course of his career, he has had the opportunity to work alongside cooks and chefs from Noma, Mugaritz, El Bulli, the Fat Duck, Alinea, Per Se, Daniel, Jean Georges, Eleven Madison Park, Le Bernardin, Bouley, Ducasse, Corton, wd~50 and Momofuku among others. Gibney holds a BFA in painting from Pratt Institute and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.

Facts and figures (and humour) for/from the toilet

 

A set of 2 essential readings for those who enjoy shithouse information. 488 and 500pp. PB. Hours of entertainment on the dunny.

$55 for both volumes including postage anywhere in Australia.

SOLD A Saudi woman gets behind the wheel to take on patriarchy

 

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PB. 295pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia. One more copy.

Manal al-Sharif was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. As a young girl she would burn her brother's boy band CDs in the oven because music was haram: forbidden by certain interpretations of Islamic law.

By her twenties she was a computer security engineer. But as she became older, the unequal way in which women are treated became too much to bear: she was branded a slut for talking to male colleagues at work; her school-age brother had to chaperone her on business trips and, while she kept a car in her garage, she was forbidden from driving down Saudi streets.

Her personal rebellion began the day she got behind the wheel of a car: an act that ultimately led to her arrest and imprisonment. Manal's Women2Drive campaign inspired other women to take action. Manal has been lauded by the Oslo Freedom Forum, described by Time Magazine as one of the most 100 most influential people in the world, and she was awarded the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent.

Daring to Drive is an account of Manal al-Sharif's fight for equality in an unequal society. A visceral coming-of-age tale, it is also a celebration of resilience, the power of education and the strength of female solidarity in the face of hardship.

SOLD Travels across Yemen and the Red Sea

 

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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

 

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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.