A brilliant eyewitness account of the violence that erupted in Indonesia at the end of the nineties. Comparable to the work of Ryszard Kapuscinski and Philip Gourevitch.
Richard Lloyd Parry is Asia Editor of The Times. He was born in 1969 and educated at Oxford. He has been visiting Asia for eighteen years and since 1995 has lived in Tokyo as a foreign correspondent, first for the Independent and now for The Times. He has reported from twenty-one countries and several wars, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Kosovo and Macedonia. His work has also appeared in the London Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of In The Time of Madness, an eyewitness account of the violence that interrupted in Indonesia in the 1990s.
"A fine book, the best I've read on the implosion of human decency that took place in Indonesia...Lloyd Parry was there for all the great stories. He writes sensitively and well...A great hit...Bold and beautifully written" Literary Review "One of the most incisive portraits of moral failure by the so-called 'international community'... In its refreshing modesty of tone and subtlety of message, it beats the more epic accounts of "heroic" journalists such as John Simpson hands down" The Times "Combining sassy reportage with a quiet commentary on his own emotions, he draws indelible portraits of countries where events have revealed how fine a line exists between civilisation and barbarity" Glasgow Herald "Written in the best tradition of journalist's dispatch from a strange land...Lloyd Parry does a worthy job navigating the complexity of Indonesian politics and history" Financial Times "Mr Lloyd Parry's volume fills a void...Harrowing...Well-written" The Economist
Between 1996 and 1999, British foreign correspondent Parry repeatedly forayed into some of the worst strife rending the islands of Indonesia, a nation emerging tumultuously from the dictatorship of General Suharto. This boldly reported, introspective account-"a book about violence, and about being afraid"-is his attempt to make sense, however incompletely, of what happened in Java, Borneo and East Timor. In Borneo, Parry saw seven decapitated heads, among other horrors, when he went to report on "an ethnic war of scarcely imaginable savagery." He witnessed the collapse of the rupiah and the 1998 mass student protests in Jakarta on the occasion of Suharto's reappointment. As the East Timorese agitated for independence from Indonesian rule, Parry ventured into the East Timor jungle to meet with rebels. And when the independence referendum soon thereafter brought Indonesia's military might down on East Timor, a Portuguese colony until 1975, Parry holed up in the U.N. compound at the vortex of the violence. He laments his self-protecting decision to leave the compound, though, comparing himself unfavorably to fearless Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski-"doused in benzene at the burning roadblocks." Holding Parry's writing to Kapuscinski's gold standard reveals it to be a little light on analysis and heavy on self-reflection, though it is clipped, vivid and honest. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
