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Stories are not enough, even though they are essential. And books about history, books of psychology--the best of them take us closer, but still not close enough. Maria Tumarkin's Axiomatic is a boundary-shifting fusion of thinking, storytelling, reportage and meditation. It takes as its starting point five axioms: 'Time Heals All Wounds'; 'History Repeats Itself'; 'Those Who Forget the Past are Condemned to Repeat It'; 'Give Me a Child Before the Age of Seven and I Will Show You the Woman'; and 'You Can't Enter The Same River Twice.' These beliefs--or intuitions--about the role the past plays in our present are often evoked as if they are timeless and self-evident truths. It is precisely because they are neither, yet still we are persuaded by them, that they tell us a great deal about the forces that shape our culture and the way we live.
'Traumascapes are a distinctive category of places transformed physically and psychically by suffering, part of a scar tissue that stretches across the world.' Maria Tumarkin grew up in the old Soviet Union, and emigrated to Australia as a teenager. In 2004, she embarked on an international odyssey to investigate and write about major sites of violence and suffering. Traumascapes is a powerful meditation on the places she visited: Bali, Berlin, Manhattan, Moscow, Port Arthur, Sarajevo, and the field in Pennsylvania where the fourth plane involved in the attacks of September 11 2001 crashed. In a time when terror and tragedy flourish these locations exhibit a compelling power, drawing pilgrims and tourists from around the world who want to understand the meaning of the traumatic events that unfolded there. In traumascapes, life goes on but the past is still unfinished business.
I left too early, before tanks rolled into Moscow in 1991, and before Gorbachev was put under home arrest in a failed coup. I left before Russia and Ukraine became separate countries, before the KGB archives were opened, before the Russian version of Wheel of Fortune, before the word 'Gulag' appeared in textbooks. I left before Chechnya, before ...
In Against Remembrance, David Rieff provocatively argues that the business of remembrance, particularly of the great tragedies of the past, are policitised events of highly selective memory. Rather than ending injustices, as we expect it to, collective memory in so many cases dooms us to an endless cycle of vengeance. Humanity, he says, simply cannot cope with the true ambivalence of historical events. And if we remember only partially, how can our memories serve us, or our society, as well as we hope?
The bestselling, laugh-out-loud, reach for your hanky story of one of Australia's best-loved comedians.
Remedying a neglected part of architectural history, this volume presents the work of four of Australia's most innovative arts and crafts architects—Walter Butler, Harold Desbrowe-Annear, Walter Liberty Vernon, and Robin Dods. The influence of the arts-and-crafts movement in Australia has long been lost between the far better known Gothic and classical revivals and the modernist movement, and obscured by the chronological construction of "federation" architecture, but this study, along with the accompanying photographs and plans, brings to life the simple lines of their design and illustrates why it is so deserving of further recognition.
Winner of the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction * Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction * Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A “delving, haunted, and poetic debut” (The New York Times Book Review) about the awe-inspiring lives of whales, revealing what they can teach us about ourselves, our planet, and our relationship with other species. When writer Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beachfront in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales reflect the condition of our oceans. Fathoms: The World in the Whale is “a work of bright and careful genius” (Robert Moor, New York Times bes...
A rare, original and stunning novel about a remarkable girl who learns the hard way that the truth doesn't always set you free - with echoes of Jasper Jones, Seven Little Australians and Cloudstreet. Shortlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize As a child, trapped in the savage act of growing up, Olive had sensed she was at the middle of something, so close to the nucleus she could almost touch it with her tongue. But like looking at her own nose for too long, everything became blurry and she had to pull away. She'd reached for happiness as a child not yet knowing that the memories she was concocting would become deceptive. That memories get you where they want you not the other way around. The set...
Marc Chagall (1887-1985), one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century, created his unique style by blending richly coloured folk art with Cubism, Surrealism and imagery drawn from the Russian Christian icon tradition. This book explores a significant but neglected period in his career, from the 1930s through to the end of World War II.
Jivan Singh, bastard son, returns to Delhi after fifteen years of exile to find a city on fire with protests and in the grip of drought. On the same day, Devraj, father of Jivan's childhood playmates, founder of India's most important Company, announces his retirement, demanding daughterly love in exchange for shares. Sita, his youngest child, refuses to play, turning her back on the marriage he has arranged. Her sisters Gargi and Radha must take over the Company and cement their father's legacy. As they struggle to make their names, a family and an empire begin to unravel. We That Are Young is Shakespeare's King Lear told as a devastating commentary on contemporary India. From Delhi mansions to luxury hotels, from city slums to the streets of Kashmir, from palace to wayside, Preti Taneja recasts an old tale in fresh, eviscerating prose that bursts with energy and fierce, beautifully measured rage. This is the story of a country that, like the old king, is descending into madness.