A wonderful book
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Norman Lewis, like Graham Greene, has an unerring instinct for the trouble spots of the world. He wrote about Cambodia before the Indo-Chinese war, Vietnam before the Vietnamese war, and was one of the first to disclose the genocide being perpetrated by the actions of logging companies and north American missionaries on the Amazonian Indians. In this beautifully written, humane, witty and perceptive book he turns his gimlet eye on Indonesia, particularly the Indonesian government's imperial ambitions and appalling repression in East Timor and Irian Jaya. Lewis makes difficult and dangerous journeys through both areas, but his focus is never on himself. He concentrates always on the lives of the local people, their dangers, their sufferings and also the fragile, precious texture of everyday life - wars go on but people still repair their motorbikes, fly kites, marry, fish and go to school.
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A delight
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As we have come to expect from such a distinguished and erudite man as Norman Lewis this book is a delight. Lewis seeks out the unusual but is so quick to pick up on subtleties, nuances, feelings of people and places. His musings and recordings are so insightful. Mr Lewis seems to glide through life, stops to admire the good and the bad, the saints and the sinners, and then moves effortlessly onwards. This book is a heart-stirring account of lifestyles that are fast being eradicated at the governments insistance and it should be read by anyoneinterested in the cultures of the East.
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