Issue #168 May 2003 Cosmopolis Don DeLILLO 224pp Pb $30.00 Blackwell Month Eric Parker, 28, compassionless and outrageously wealthy, always gets his way. On this day, he is intent on getting his haircut. The traffic is locked tight Buy any Blackwell title this month and go in due to a visit from the President, the funeral of an idolised rapper and an the draw to win your selection of Blackwell intense anti-globalisation protest, which is getting violent in downtown New Publishing books to the value of $300. York. Things seem to be getting out of hand and this invigorates Parker, who We stock a large range of Blackwell Publishing titles, especially in the areas of feels an arrogant superiority amongst the people. Against the advice of his Philosophy, History and Ancient History. 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The overload of information, Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend by Daniel Donoghue (Pb $50.50) advertisements and money, and the ruthless True Religion by Graham Ward (Pb $50.55) characters that are part of this, are conveyed in The World's Great Philosophers (Pb $58.25) his witty and exquisite language. Considered a A Guide Through the Theory of Knowledge by Adam Morton (Pb $57.10) master of the novel by many - his past books Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind edited by Stephen Stich (Pb $69.30) include Underworld (Pb $22.00) and Mao II (Pb $24.95) - his latest reinforces the claim that he The Sioux may well be one of the greatest living writers. Fans The Dakota and Lakota Nations of Delillo will be pleased. Readers who have never Guy GIBBON 311pp Hb $70.40 ventured into his works may want to start now. Perhaps no Indian people is better known than the Sioux. Tristan With rigorous scholarship and remarkably clear writing, a leading expert on the Sioux raises questions about Oryx and Crake their history, while synthesising the historical and Magaret ATWOOD 374pp Hb $45.00 anthropological research over a wide scope of issues and Set in a bleak and post-cataclysmic future, this periods. This stimulating text includes historical novel travels further than The Handmaid's Tale sketches, topical debates and imaginary reconstructions (Pb $21.95) into a forbidding and forsaken vision based on speculative research in order to engage the of where the world is headed. Snowman lives in a reader in a deeper thinking of this fascinating people. It world ruined by apocalyptic events and climate covers the entire historical range of the Sioux, from their emergence as an change and the pressures of over-population. Apart from Edenic identifiable group in late prehistory to the year 2000. As an archaeologist, author creatures (which from the beginning the reader realises are not quite Guy Gibbon has studied the material remains of the Sioux for many years. His human), he appears to be alone and teetering on the edge of insanity. In expertise, his informative and engaging writing style, dozens of photographs, and flashbacks and hallucinations, his past and that of the human race is the exhaustive endnotes and further reading lists revealed. Only two people had any power over him - Oryx, a woman of should make this a compelling and indispensable text delicate beauty with a sordid past which has not damaged her innocence for students, scholars and readers of Sioux history. and Crake, his only true friend, a genius-level scientist who is all too sane. Entry forms at cash desk. All mail order purchases will be entered Some very vivid images coupled with Atwood's strong writing make this the automatically. Winner to be announced in July Abbeys Advocate. stuff of nightmare - and worth reading. Lindy Meet Dr Ghada Karmi In paperback at last! Come and enjoy some light refreshments and meet Dr Ghada The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Karmi, who will be Sydney for the Writers Festival and will Crusades, Jihads and Modernity visit Abbeys to sign and discuss the compelling memoir of by Tariq Ali was a bestseller in hardback, her life, In Search of Fatima (461pp Hb $48.00). Here she and this updated paperback edition recalls her childhood in Palestine, the flight to Britain after contains a substantial new section on the catastrophe of 1948 and her coming-of-age in the coffee Indonesia, The Road to Bali, as well as bars of Golders Green, the middle-class Jewish quarter in new material on Pakistan, Afghanistan North London. With humour, she describes the bizarre and and Iraq. sometimes tense realities of her life in Little Tel Aviv' and the struggle for her, as for See page 5 for more details. many other women in the late 1950s, to get a university grant to study medicine. Set against the backdrop of the continuing crisis in the Middle East, this book reflects her experiences of displacement, loss and nostalgia for a vanished past, arguing that the 19 - 25 MAY only crime the Palestinians committed was to be born in Palestine. See our website for details Thursday 29 May 12.15pm-1.15pm www.abbeys.com.au Fiction Dying for Cake Louise LIMERICK 316pp Pb $22.00 The Twenty-seventh City Life has suddenly taken an unexpected turn for the women in a Brisbane mothers' coffee Jonathan FRANZEN 528pp Pb $21.95 group. Baby Amy disappears and her mother, Evelyn, broken and distant in a psychiatric hospital, won't utter a word. Desperate to find Amy, desperate to understand, the women St Louis is a fading river town whose only cope with the loss in their own ways. But Evelyn's withdrawal has altered them current claim to national attention is that it has irreversibly and each begins to look for something to satiate the cravings they had not chosen a woman from Bombay - a young, allowed to surface before. Joanna is dying for cake. Clare is longing to paint again. Susan charismatic émigré named Jammu - to be its new wants to claw back all the time she's lost. Wendy is trying to forget the past. Then there's police chief. No sooner has Jammu been Evelyn. Nobody knows what Evelyn wants. But how can she not want her baby back? installed, however, than the city becomes embroiled in a bizarre political conspiracy. A The Girl Who Played Go classic of contemporary fiction, this novel shows Shan SA 320pp Tp $29.95 us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out and Set in Japanese occupied Manchuria in the 1930s, this haunting and shocking tale of the American Dream unravelling into terror and love is reflected in the age-old game of Go. In the Place of a Thousand Winds, snow falls dark comedy. This was Franzen's critically as a 16-year-old Chinese girl beats all-comers at the game. One opponent is a Japanese acclaimed debut novel (1988). He was named officer, rigid and imbued with the imperial ethic, far from home and fascinated by this one of the best American novelists under 40 by young woman who plays like a man. Like Go itself, their encounters are subtle and Granta and The New Yorker for his prize-winning and internationally best selling restrained, yet also surprisingly fierce. As their stories unfold, the Japanese army moves The Corrections (Pb $22.95). inexorably through the land in the vanguard of a greater war, leaving bloodstains and destruction in its wake. due May Due Preparations for the Plague Drop City Janette Turner HOSPITAL 390pp Tp $29.95 T C BOYLE 444pp Tp $29.95 How do people live with the knowledge of an evil event - whether they caused it This is Boyle's most accessible novel to date. He must be or whether they survived it? In this dense and atmospheric novel, that question is mellowing since this tale of communal living (a la navel- explored. Lowell Hawthorne lost his mother in a bungled plane hijacking and gazing hippie-chicks) is really rather sweet. Drop City is avoids thinking about the past. Samantha Raleigh was one of the children a commune in California (of course) inhabited by the released by the terrorists and is obsessed with finding answers. The death of expected characters You've got your earth-mama, your Lowell's father, who spent his life working for US intelligence, and the legacy of a free-lerve proponents and their bicyles, potheads and sports bag full of incriminating evidence, throw Lowell and Samantha together. acid freaks, a genuine Mr Niceguy who hooks up with the Taut and suspenseful, at times almost claustrophobic, this makes for a hippie-chick du jour (yes, her new name is Star) and compelling read! Lindy several more 60s stereotypes who are mostly inoffensive, although the pseudo-hepcats are thugs at heart, Barracuda 945 disdainful of the ofays and their females. Running Patrick ROBINSON Tp $29.95 parallel to the disintegration of Drop City - due to a lack of consideration on the part of the local city council - is the story of Sess Harder.