Nicholas Jose
Autore di The Red Thread
Sull'Autore
Fonte dell'immagine: http://www.allenandunwin.com
Opere di Nicholas Jose
New Art in China Post-1989 1 copia
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- Jose, Nicholas
- Data di nascita
- 1952-11-09
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- Australia
- Luogo di nascita
- London, England, UK
- Luogo di residenza
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Istruzione
- University of Oxford (Magdalen College)
Australian National University - Organizzazioni
- Harvard University
Utenti
Recensioni
Novelist, essayist, editor, academic and former diplomat Nicholas José is one of my favourite authors, and I was fascinated by his latest novel, The Idealist, which is based on recent history in our own region.
The novel begins with Anne seeking help to unravel the mystery of her husband's death in Washington. She suspects that there is more to it than the suicide of a man under great stress. She travels back to Canberra to visit an old friend, David, who is a lawyer with connections. As they talk, the back story is revealed...
Jake's job as a defence analyst took him to East Timor after the 1998 fall of Suharto, the dictator who had ruled Indonesia under 'guided democracy' for thirty years. As Reformasi transformed the political landscape, Suharto's successor, B J Habibe offered regional autonomy to replace Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. The Timorese Independence movement which had been resisting this occupation since 1975, called for a referendum instead.
Enter Australia.
Australia — which had supported Indonesian independence after WW2 (when its ally Britain didn't) — had long kept a watchful eye on Indonesia, and mindful of its large army and growing economic might, had declined to interfere on behalf of the East Timorese in 1975. Not even over the killing of the Balibo Five, a group of journalists working for Australian media, who were reporting from East Timor just before the Indonesian invasion. But as Australian politicians begin to perceive the possibilities in such a referendum being held, Jake travels to East Timor in the guise of an aid worker to see what the results might be.
And for all our Prime Minister's posturing, witnessed by those of us of a certain age, we now know that the premature referendum which resulted in dreadful violence and the necessity of a peace-keeping force led by Australia, was nothing to do with democratic ideals and self-determination. It was in Australia's own self-interest.
When Jake is 'on the ground' in East Timor, and sees for himself the buildup of Indonesian troops, the systematic hunt for the resistance activists and the 'chatter' about eliminating the local population, he finds himself conflicted. He is a soldier, whose duty is to his country, but (despite his long years of marriage) his heart is captured by a beautiful young activist called Elisa, and his conscience is hostage to the dreams of the East Timorese.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/09/30/the-idealist-2023-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)
The novel begins with Anne seeking help to unravel the mystery of her husband's death in Washington. She suspects that there is more to it than the suicide of a man under great stress. She travels back to Canberra to visit an old friend, David, who is a lawyer with connections. As they talk, the back story is revealed...
Jake's job as a defence analyst took him to East Timor after the 1998 fall of Suharto, the dictator who had ruled Indonesia under 'guided democracy' for thirty years. As Reformasi transformed the political landscape, Suharto's successor, B J Habibe offered regional autonomy to replace Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. The Timorese Independence movement which had been resisting this occupation since 1975, called for a referendum instead.
Enter Australia.
Australia — which had supported Indonesian independence after WW2 (when its ally Britain didn't) — had long kept a watchful eye on Indonesia, and mindful of its large army and growing economic might, had declined to interfere on behalf of the East Timorese in 1975. Not even over the killing of the Balibo Five, a group of journalists working for Australian media, who were reporting from East Timor just before the Indonesian invasion. But as Australian politicians begin to perceive the possibilities in such a referendum being held, Jake travels to East Timor in the guise of an aid worker to see what the results might be.
And for all our Prime Minister's posturing, witnessed by those of us of a certain age, we now know that the premature referendum which resulted in dreadful violence and the necessity of a peace-keeping force led by Australia, was nothing to do with democratic ideals and self-determination. It was in Australia's own self-interest.
When Jake is 'on the ground' in East Timor, and sees for himself the buildup of Indonesian troops, the systematic hunt for the resistance activists and the 'chatter' about eliminating the local population, he finds himself conflicted. He is a soldier, whose duty is to his country, but (despite his long years of marriage) his heart is captured by a beautiful young activist called Elisa, and his conscience is hostage to the dreams of the East Timorese.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/09/30/the-idealist-2023-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)
I am indebted to Wakefield Press for their June 4th Tweet about this book, "as topical and revelatory as when first published".
I hunted out a copy at the library as, almost contemporaneously, there were mass protests in Hong Kong, against a proposed Extradition Bill which would not only enable extradition from Hong Kong to China, but would also enable the integration of aspects of Hong Kong's legal system (which is basically British, i.e. innocent till proven guilty) with China's (which is basically socialist, i.e. guilty as soon as you are charged). But it is not just the prospect of this change to the protections of Hong Kong's separate legal system that is a matter of concern. Those of us who remember the horror of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in June 1989 have been watching these protests in Hong Kong with alarm in case the violence escalates. The situation as I write is that the proposed Bill has been dropped, but protestors are maintaining vigilance despite the violence against them by their own government. It was the eerie confluence of this protest movement in Hong Kong, with the 30-year anniversary of the democracy protests which ended in the massacre, that made reading Nicholas Jose's Avenue of Eternal Peace such riveting reading.
Nominated for the 1990 Miles Franklin Prize, Avenue of Eternal Peace was Jose's third novel, and it was written from an 'insider's' perspective. In 1986-87, Jose worked in Shanghai and Beijing, teaching at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and the East China Normal University, and after that was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy in Beijing from 1987-1990. This is the blurb from Jose's website:
What drives the novel initially, is Wally Frith's search for Professor Hsu Chien Lung, and the author (writing in 1989) draws on recent discoveries that cervical cancer is caused by a virus. Frith's wife has died of cancer, so his search for cancer treatments is personal: he's a no-nonsense man (i.e. not interested in quackery) but he has over time witnessed a change in cancer treatments from those that were based on a 'remove-the-invader' approach using either surgery or radiotherapy or a combination of the two, to a recognition that the cancer is caused by the body itself in response to poisons or triggers of some kind and that the malformation originated from viruses. What he needs is clinical data, and he thinks Professor Hsu has it.
Knowing what we do of socialist regimes and the way that people can 'disappear', makes the disappearance of Professor Hsu not only mysterious but also potentially dangerous for Frith.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/06/16/avenue-of-eternal-peace-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)
I hunted out a copy at the library as, almost contemporaneously, there were mass protests in Hong Kong, against a proposed Extradition Bill which would not only enable extradition from Hong Kong to China, but would also enable the integration of aspects of Hong Kong's legal system (which is basically British, i.e. innocent till proven guilty) with China's (which is basically socialist, i.e. guilty as soon as you are charged). But it is not just the prospect of this change to the protections of Hong Kong's separate legal system that is a matter of concern. Those of us who remember the horror of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in June 1989 have been watching these protests in Hong Kong with alarm in case the violence escalates. The situation as I write is that the proposed Bill has been dropped, but protestors are maintaining vigilance despite the violence against them by their own government. It was the eerie confluence of this protest movement in Hong Kong, with the 30-year anniversary of the democracy protests which ended in the massacre, that made reading Nicholas Jose's Avenue of Eternal Peace such riveting reading.
Nominated for the 1990 Miles Franklin Prize, Avenue of Eternal Peace was Jose's third novel, and it was written from an 'insider's' perspective. In 1986-87, Jose worked in Shanghai and Beijing, teaching at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and the East China Normal University, and after that was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy in Beijing from 1987-1990. This is the blurb from Jose's website:
Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace is the boulevard leading to Tiananmen Square. The world witnessed what happened there in May and June 1989, but ultimately came no closer to understanding the riddle of contemporary China than a TV screen montage. Now, in an atmospheric and penetrating novel that takes place a short time before the massacre, Nicholas Jose captures this city of contradictions, its people, and a moment in history much as Christopher Isherwood did for 1930’s Berlin.
Wally Frith, the hero-observer of this remarkable novel, is an Australian doctor and university professor specializing in cancer research. Middle-aged, emotionally bereft, recently widowed, he feels himself burnt-out. Therefore he readily accepts an invitation to come as a visiting professor to Peking Union Medical College, China’s leading teaching and research hospital. The prospect pleases: new scenes, new people, new life… and beyond these vague expectations, he has a particular goal–to meet Professor Hsu Chien Lung who, years before, had written a trail-blazing paper on cancer, and who Wally believes may still be on the faculty there. But Professor Hsu seems to have vanished; perhaps he never existed. The search, which has its macabre as well as comic elements, is stalled, and Wally meanwhile immerses himself in the ordinary (sometimes extraordinary) life of Beijing, newly exposed to Western influences, and in a state of vigorous contradiction.
This extraordinary, kaleidoscopic, multi-leveled novel shows us a China the TV cameras couldn’t photograph—the China inside the hearts of its people. It is a moving and revelatory experience by a writer who was a witness to history and to a people’s dreams.
What drives the novel initially, is Wally Frith's search for Professor Hsu Chien Lung, and the author (writing in 1989) draws on recent discoveries that cervical cancer is caused by a virus. Frith's wife has died of cancer, so his search for cancer treatments is personal: he's a no-nonsense man (i.e. not interested in quackery) but he has over time witnessed a change in cancer treatments from those that were based on a 'remove-the-invader' approach using either surgery or radiotherapy or a combination of the two, to a recognition that the cancer is caused by the body itself in response to poisons or triggers of some kind and that the malformation originated from viruses. What he needs is clinical data, and he thinks Professor Hsu has it.
Knowing what we do of socialist regimes and the way that people can 'disappear', makes the disappearance of Professor Hsu not only mysterious but also potentially dangerous for Frith.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/06/16/avenue-of-eternal-peace-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)
The Custodians, first published in 1997, was Nicholas José’s fifth novel, and it captures my generation perfectly. Tracing the lives of characters who came to adulthood in the heady 1970s, it depicts the idealism and the optimism, the delusions and pretensions, and the steady disenchantment of adult life in the real world. It’s a big, heavy book, nearly 500 pages in my first edition, and it’s big and ambitious in its preoccupations. I’m a bit surprised it wasn’t nominated for the Miles Franklin, but 1997 was a very strong year with books by David Malouf, Thea Astley, Janet Turner Hospital, John A Scott, Robert Dessaix and Robert Drewe, with the prize eventually going to David Foster’s The Glade within the Grove. So The Custodians hasn’t had as much attention as I think it deserves – despite a 2012 paperback reissue in the Allen & Unwin House of Books series – and an impressive blurb from no less than an authority than Simon Schama
Anyway, I found it very satisfying reading over a number of days…
The main characters start life in Adelaide, and leave it for what they think is a more exciting life elsewhere. Jane is a painter in love with the light in Sydney; Wendy is an indolent thrill-seeker with a penchant for dubious company; Elspeth the heiress wants enlightenment but not if it involves parting with her money; and Josie wants to be good and thinks she can be, as a nun.
José fleshes out the characterisation of the men a bit more, especially Alex, clever and ambitious but always wanting to keep his options open. At ANU he studies economics, Australian history and law, and he won’t commit to a relationship with Jane in case something better comes along. (He keeps Josie ‘in reserve’ back in Adelaide until – to his chagrin – she joins the nunnery). Ziggy is a charismatic thespian; and René is an ideologue spouting dialectics and Chinese communism with Alex at ANU. On the fringes of their childhood group are Aboriginal boys from the Stolen Generations: Cleve, a scholarship boy at a Catholic boarding school, and Danny who stumbles from one institution to another, marginalised further by his reticence and his illiteracy.
While the relationships between these characters hold the book together, the themes of The Custodians unfold as Australia comes of age in the 1970s. With the finding of Moorna Woman (an event fictionalised from the discovery of Mungo Woman) Australian history turns out to be much older than first thought, and the emerging empowerment of Aboriginal Australians under a reforming government (based on the Whitlam Years) means that the pastoral land on which the bones are found becomes contested. Chinese investors make an appearance as Australia turns to Asia, and their Australian interpreter, a character loosely based on the communist sympathiser Wilfred Burchett, has to decide where his loyalties lie.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/25/the-custodians-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)
A brilliantly vivid tapestry of the Australian predicament, rich in possibility, but shot through with accident and revelation. Through it all breathes the ancient reality of the land: its red earth and bright air painted with the sure hand of a master.’ – Simon Schama, A&U website, (where, bizarrely, it has been categorised as Popular Fiction. Have they read it??)
Anyway, I found it very satisfying reading over a number of days…
The main characters start life in Adelaide, and leave it for what they think is a more exciting life elsewhere. Jane is a painter in love with the light in Sydney; Wendy is an indolent thrill-seeker with a penchant for dubious company; Elspeth the heiress wants enlightenment but not if it involves parting with her money; and Josie wants to be good and thinks she can be, as a nun.
José fleshes out the characterisation of the men a bit more, especially Alex, clever and ambitious but always wanting to keep his options open. At ANU he studies economics, Australian history and law, and he won’t commit to a relationship with Jane in case something better comes along. (He keeps Josie ‘in reserve’ back in Adelaide until – to his chagrin – she joins the nunnery). Ziggy is a charismatic thespian; and René is an ideologue spouting dialectics and Chinese communism with Alex at ANU. On the fringes of their childhood group are Aboriginal boys from the Stolen Generations: Cleve, a scholarship boy at a Catholic boarding school, and Danny who stumbles from one institution to another, marginalised further by his reticence and his illiteracy.
While the relationships between these characters hold the book together, the themes of The Custodians unfold as Australia comes of age in the 1970s. With the finding of Moorna Woman (an event fictionalised from the discovery of Mungo Woman) Australian history turns out to be much older than first thought, and the emerging empowerment of Aboriginal Australians under a reforming government (based on the Whitlam Years) means that the pastoral land on which the bones are found becomes contested. Chinese investors make an appearance as Australia turns to Asia, and their Australian interpreter, a character loosely based on the communist sympathiser Wilfred Burchett, has to decide where his loyalties lie.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/25/the-custodians-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 22
- Opere correlate
- 4
- Utenti
- 397
- Popolarità
- #61,078
- Voto
- 3.5
- Recensioni
- 11
- ISBN
- 77
- Lingue
- 2
So, is it a thriller/crime novel? Well, the tropes are there. It has a grisly murder, and the mastermind thereof comes to know about the network of people who know something about it and has a perpetrator able to dispose of them. There is an accidental witness, and another one who is not accidental at all. The police, withholding information from each other, include senior ones not interested in doing anything about it and junior ones who'd like to make their mark. One of them is old and wise and shrewd, and the other is young and sexy with a dose of braggadocio. The accidental witness decides to play amateur detective and he networks with a bunch of other people who 'know something' but are not telling the police. People stake out buildings and cars get followed. The settings range from the luxury mansion to industrial wastelands, and of course a Sydney bridge is involved, but no, not that one, a different one! And in the best traditions of the genre, the perpetrator gets what looks like his just desserts towards the end of the book only there are some pages left to go — so the reader knows there must be a twist in the tail... and there is, nicely done.
So yes, Original Face does have some elements in common with both police procedurals and thrillers, but unlike other novels purporting to be literary versions of this genre, this one transcends those genre elements, and it's more than prose like this that makes it so:
As I've noted in my reviews of Jose's other books, he has lived and worked in China, and his knowledge of their culture is deep and profound. The long shadow of Tiananmen Square finds its way into the back stories of his characters, and one of the most poignant moments takes place when elderly Chinese parents who lost their older son in the 1989 massacre, are brought to Australia to identify the mutilated body of their other son. (Gauche consular officials provide them with a Taiwanese interpreter which adds to the incomprehensibility of the situation.)
Identity, the masks people use, and what makes us who we are, are at the core of this sophisticated novel. The city of Sydney itself is rendered in all its complexity: its varied landscapes and its rich ethnic diversity, the old and the new rubbing along beside one another. The Chinese expats are a microcosm of a Sydney sub-culture, its networks and hierarchies and its distorted Confucian values of fidelity and family.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/01/09/original-face-2005-by-nicholas-jose/… (altro)