Australasia the Pacific Region

 

A selection of books on Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Melanasia, Micronesia, and the South Pacific islands.

Down Under

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson's journey around Australia is as hillarious and informed as his other books.

Transworld Publishers 2001

ISBN 9780552997034

Pbk £8.99

The Songlines

Bruce Chatwin

The songlines are the invisible pathways criss-crossing Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of the stories.

1987, 2005

ISBN 9780099769910

Pbk £7.99

Going as Far as I Can

Duncan Fallowell

When Duncan Fallowell was left some money by a friend, he decided to put into practice a long held idea - to travel as far away from home as possible.  Why?  "So that I need never travel again - and I could relax", he says.  For him this meant travelling to New Zealand, where another fantasy son asserted itself - "to find the place of perfect exile".

Profile Books 2008

ISBN 97818466983121

Pbk £8.99

Bone People, The

Keri Hulme

The Bone People is a love story.  It begins when a mute six-year-old, full of blasting hurt and strange charm, wanders off the beach and into the home of a despairing artist.  Kerewin has given up everything but drinking, thinking and fishing, but the arrival of the boy Simon and, later on, of his Maori foster-father Joe, drags all three into the gyre of possibilities.  Cruel, funny, ardent and beautiful, The Bone People is a powerful and visionary New Zealand fable.

Picador 1984

(Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize)

ISBN 9780330485418

Pbk £8.99

Peter Carey - 30 Days in Sydney

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

This is "a wildly distorted account", claims Peter Carey, of his return from New York to his home town, where together with a number of lifelong friends he sets out to examine the character of Sydney through the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  Approaching the city obliquely and tangentially Carey gives his boisterous, argumentative and opinionated friends full rein and what emerges, although often unruly, idiosyncratic and highly individual, is a rather charming and endearing portrait not only of the city and its magnificent bay but also of Carey and his friends.

Bloomsbury 2001

ISBN 0747555001

Hbk £9.99

 

Back to previous page.