Three young Irish people have come to Australia, running from the economic ruins of their home country & their own unhappy lives. In this promised l&, stunned by the heat & the vast arid space of the interior, they each try to escape their past in a chaotic world of backpacker hostels, huge fruit farms & squalid factories, surrounded by new friends who are even more damaged & dangerous than they are themselves. Endless supplies of cheap drink & drugs loosen what little sense of responsibility they have, & a spiral of self-destructive behaviour forces each of them to face up to the reality of their lives. This is a story of the consequences of impulsive choices & of the places where they lead. A vulnerable young man is left alone by his friends in a remote wilderness; a desperate girl puts herself into the hands of violent sex traffickers; a once-privileged favourite son lets a drunken quarrel escalate to murder. An utterly compelling, readable novel that hooks from the first page & immerses us in an all-too topical nightmare. ...

A group of young Irish migrants leave a man called Hopper for dead on an outback road in Australia. They barely know him; no-one will miss him in their world of hostels, wild nights on cheap wine & grinding work on isolated farms. In this powerful novel about the discovery of responsibility, three young people
- Fiona, Murph & Hopper
- flee the collapse of their country`s economy. In the heat & endless spaces of Australia they try to escape their past, but impulsive cruelty, shame & guilt drag them down, & it is easy to make terrible choices.

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` In early 1998 I went to Perth in Western Australia in order to attend the literature festival, & part of the arrangement was that I should go to Karratha to do their first ever literary dinner. Karratha is a mining town a long way further north. The landscape is extraordinary, being composed of vast heaps of dark red earth & rock poking out of the never-ending bush. I imagine that Mars must have a similar feel to it. I went exploring & discovered the bronze statue to Red Dog outside the town of Dampier. I felt straight away that I had to find out more about this splendid dog. A few months later I returned to Western Australia & spent two glorious weeks driving around collecting Red Dog stories & visiting the places that he knew, writing up the text as I went along. I hope my cat never finds out that I have written a story to celebrate the life of a dog.` Louis de Bernieres ...

` My painter friends think I am a die-hard conservative, my writer friends think I am a man of loose morals. In Jushlin Temple I am a quiet disciple, in the Propaganda Department I am a decadent youth. Women call me a cynical artist, the police call me a hooligan. Well, they can think what they like. I only have 20, 000 days left to live`. In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 & was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. All around him, China was changing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on ` Spiritual Pollution`; & young people were rebelling. With his long hair, denim jeans & artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit & the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man; & he could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China & set off in search of himself. Ma Jian`s journey would last three years & take him to deserts & overpopulated cities, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquillity & beauty. The result is an utterly unique book: an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider & an outsider in his own country could have written. ...

Red Dust tells the fascinating account of Ma Jian`s three-year journey around China. Following his 30th birthday he becomes desperate to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. Facing surveillance from his work unit & the police as a result of Deng Xiaoping`s clamping down on ` Spiritual Pollution` he chooses to uproot himself from his bohemian lifestyle, estranged wife & child, & flee for the Chinese hinterlands in search of himself. Setting off for the westernmost border of China he immerses himself in the remotest parts of country, travelling with little or no money & surviving by doing odd jobs & publishing poetry & short stories through his remaining network of literary friends. He leads us through an array of amazing adventures, from finding himself lost in the desert with no water for three days to scaling a huge cliff in a remarkably gung-ho style. This story speaks volumes about this fascinating l&. Beautifully translated from Chinese by Flora Drew the story he tells is written from both an insider & outsider`s perspective providing a complete portrait of what life is like for ordinary Chinese people. Told with an understated & elegant style, this is a book that means that you can experience the wonders of China for yourself, seen through the eyes of a native & told in a way that no foreign writer could match. Winner of the 2002 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award ...

Winner of the Duff Cooper & Lionel Gelber prizes In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority & detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, & what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. The book draws on a mass of archival material & first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It

Includes:: accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly `anti-revolutionary` elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine`s cultural & political leadership
- & then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified & memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, & were undermined & harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country`s true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship & human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories & that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia & Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.


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The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag & Iron Curtain. In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority & detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, & what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. The book draws on a mass of archival material & first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It

Includes:: accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly `anti-revolutionary` elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine`s cultural & political leadership
- & then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified & memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, & were undermined & harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country`s true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship & human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories & that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia & Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.


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Map No. 111, Red Feather Lakes
- Glendevey, CO, in an extensive series of GPS compatible, contoured hiking maps of USA’s national
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A trusted economic commentator provides a penetrating account of the threats to China`s continued economic rise Under President Xi Jinping, China has become a large & confident power both at home & abroad, but the country also faces serious challenges. In this critical take on China`s future, economist George Magnus explores four key traps that China must confront & overcome in order to thrive: debt, middle income, the Renminbi, & an aging population. Looking at the political direction President Xi Jinping is taking, Magnus argues that Xi`s authoritarian & repressive philosophy is ultimately not compatible with the country`s economic aspirations. Thorough & well researched, the book also investigates the potential for conflicts over trade, China`s evolving relationship with Trump, & the country`s attempt to win influence & control in Eurasia through the Belt & Road initiative. ...

This is the extraordinary story of the Kremlin
- from prize-winning author & historian Catherine Merridale. Both beautiful & profoundly
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