Visions of Zimbabwe

Stewart J. Rickards

House of Books

Paul, a Vietnam vet disfigured by a napalm attack, has recently been deserted by his horrified wife. Day after day he camps at Devil's Head and takes his surfboard over the outer reef, hoping the sharp rocks will claim him and save him from his nightmares. From the shop on the beach, Brenda -- scarred by her brief marriage to an air-force pilot -- watches his crazy dance of death. A starving and homeless Aboriginal boy trying to find enough food to survive after his parents' death becomes an intermediary between the two misfits consumed by their own demons. One day the two are forced out of their introspection when tragedy intervenes.

The Half-Burnt Tree

Literature & Fiction

Cusack, Dymphna

Contemporary

Capturing the nostalgia of springtime -- picnics, dances, the drama of first love -- this gentle autobiography tells the story of Douglas Stewart's youth in a New Zealand country town, 'an almost invisible speck on the map about two hundred miles north of the great glittering metropolis of Wellington'. Brmming with mischievous humor and rejoicing of nature, Springtime in Taranaki offers us a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man, of leaving home, and a world of innocence long past.

Springtime in Taranaki: An Autobiography of Youth

Biographies & Memoirs

Stewart, Douglas

Arts & Literature

Against the scarred landscape of contemporary Australia, eight childhood friends seek their individual destinies: Alex, ambitious but melancholy; Cleve, snatched by the state from his parents; Danny, his twin brother, who has spent more of his life in custody than free; Elspeth, the heiress seeking enlightenment; Jane, passionately committed to her art; Josie, dedicated to doing good; Wendy, in search of fun; and Ziggy, the brilliant actor. They are the custodians, but of what, and for whom? From the 1950s to the 1980s, from the South Australian outback to Manhattan's art world and the London stage, from tropical Queensland to Mao's China, The Custodians has an extraordinary reach. It is at once a startling and often comical novel about friendship, love, and betrayal, and an astounding story of struggle and history—a history which these eight characters must both embrace and transcend if they are to find reconciliation with the land to which they belong, but which does not belong to them. The Custodians is a triumph of storytelling, a sharp and moving epic from one of Australia's most acclaimed writers.

The Custodians

Jose, Nicholas

Literary

A bough in hell

Vulnerable and uncertain of herself, Roslyn is a woman who needs people needs to feel that people need her. But her husband Rod, an officer in the Australian Navy, is often away at sea, and her daughter -- grown up and preoccupied with her studies and her boyfriend -- comes only rarely to see her. Imagining slights where perhaps none exist, and feeling herself shunned by the tenants in her Sydney block of flats, Roslyn starts drinking to console herself on her lonely evenings at home, unaware that what is at first only a harmless temporary escape from barren reality will grow into a need, and then into an overpowering obsession.

A Bough in Hell

Genre Fiction

Candelo

Blain, Georgia

The Black Opal

The Black Opal is a tender story of the highs and lows of a close-knit community of opal-miners. The men and women of Fallen Star Ridge - Potch, Michael, Sophie, and Snow-Shoes - love their land and cherish their freedom. But then a wealthy buyer arrives in town with an offer seemingly too lucrative to refuse and they are tempted to relinquish their independence.Though bound by a promise to her mother to never leave the Ridge, Sophie departs for New York, only to find that she can't stay away from her home. Throughout the novel, the irrepressible love she bears for her ill-matched soul mate, Arthur Henty, threatens to overturn both their lives.

PRICHARD, Katharine Susannah

Romance

In this highly original book, Nicholas Jose sets out to discover Roger Jose -- perhaps a distant relative -- and his life in a remote Aboriginal community on Australia's farthest shore. Roger's chosen motto, still pinned up in Borroloola, was 'Man's greatness is the fewness of his needs.' In his journey through the Gulf of Carpentaria searching for Roger, Nicholas Jose also met a young Gangalidda man, Murrandoo Yanner, representative of some of the most deprived Aboriginal communities in Australia who has committed himself to fighting for his people's rights in their vast and beautiful traditional territory. This book is the absorbing response of a modern writer to his own heritage.

Black Sheep: Journey to Borroloola

Community & Culture

This selection of A.D. Hope's poetry was published in 1992, the first in Australia since 1973. It includes pieces from all his major collections, including The Wandering Islands, first published in 1955, his subsequent collections A Late Picking, Antechinus, The Age of Reason, and Orpheus (1991). This collection provides an overview of a career that spanned over sixty years, and is a chance to look anew at an enigmatic and compelling figure widely regarded as one of the finest English-language poets of the twentieth century.

Selected Poems

Hope, A. D.

Poetry

It is 1941 and the storm clouds of war gather over Australia. In the mountains outside Sydney the Massey family are reunited by their father's death. Gilbert is a successful novelist, struggling with writer's block in middle age. A socialist and intellectual, he shares his political understanding - and fears - with his sister Marty and brother Nick. But he is locked in an unhappy marriage with a woman of little imagination and obsessive respectability, and their daughters, Prue and Virginia, are as incompatible as their parents. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, war becomes a reality. As Gilbert and his family are overtaken by the forces of history, they must come to terms with their personal and public failures, and watch as the new generation inevitably mirrors the contradictions and turmoil of the old.

The Little Company

DARK, ELEANOR

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