Edition 14
The Trouble with Paradise
- Published 5th December, 2006
- ISBN: 9780733319396
- Extent: 266 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
The paradise myth has shaped civilisations for centuries.
When Christopher Columbus first “discovered” America, it was considered a new Garden of Eden. Later it became a secular paradise in which rights and freedoms were enshrined.
In this current time of terror, however, many of these rights are being questioned – there is trouble in paradise.
In Australia, freedom of expression is also under assault. In animportant new essay, Frank Moorhouse considers the threat, documents the attack, explores its consequences and challenges us to respond. The freshness, originality and scope of his essay will stimulate and provoke. It is a must-read article.
Martin Amis, Chalmers Johnson, John Kinsella, Kirsty Sword Gusmão and others explore the lure of paradise and its shortcomings.
In this Edition
The age of horrorism
IT WAS MID-OCTOBER 2001, and night was closing in on the border city of Peshawar, in Pakistan, as my friend – a reporter and political man of letters – approached a market stall and began to haggle over a batch of t-shirts bearing the...
Paradise revised
ONE WINTER'S DAY at the end of the '50s, in the Melbourne suburbs of my childhood, I received in the mail an official-looking certificate on thick paper with impressive calligraphy announcing, grandly, that I had been accepted as a member of the National Geographic...
Finding and losing Eden
IN THE LATE 1960s, the peripatetic and mercurial Australian artist Donald Friend found something of the happiness he had long been seeking. By then in his fifties, he had been preoccupied since adolescence by often unrealisable ideas about beauty and the exotic, haunted for...
The good empire
REGARDLESS OF WHO succeeds George W. Bush, the incumbent US president will have to deal with an emboldened Pentagon, an engorged military-industrial complex, an empire of bases, and a fifty-year-old tradition of not revealing to the public what the US military establishment costs or...
Virtue, power: the dilemma of US foreign policy
ON COMING TO office in 2001, George W. Bush encapsulated his administration's intended approach to foreign policy in a seemingly bizarre conjunction of qualities: "strength and humility". Strength clearly signified a determination that America should, as Ronald Reagan said, "stand tall" in the world...
A perverse appeal
I WAS AN accidental tourist. I travelled to Japan to see my daughter, Nora, who – like many young Australians – financed her travels by teaching English. Nora went to Japan as a guest worker, and I went as the guest worker's mother. I'd...
The writer in a time of terror
Winner, The 2007 Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism, Social Equity JournalismWinner, 2007 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public DebateWinner, 2007 PEN Keneally AwardIN MY TIME as a writer, I have lived through three significant freedom of...
The hanging garden
NOT SO LONG ago, I lived in paradise. A luxury apartment on the Gold Coast. I still remember waking up every morning to the sea and sky. All that blue felt like heaven. The elevator doors flinging open, a sublime gateway, right into the...
Women and children first
ROSALINA XIMENES' EYES were downcast as I leaned forward to kiss her lightly on both cheeks. I caught the smoky scent of the firewood she had used to cook her last meal as I pressed the envelope of money into her hand. Rosalina was...
Tumbleweeds
IT WAS SOON after I arrived in Japan that I met the sexpats. The long-term sex holidaymakers. You know the type. Asia is full of them – Japan especially, though it's a little harder to find obliging children there, in the second biggest economy...
The Peeping Tom, the architect and other voyeurs
LYING IN BED, under a cotton sheet and a slow-turning fan, I was listening to tropical birds – not knowing what kind they were, but enjoying the early morning illiteracy that comes from a mind on holiday in a foreign country. I won't say...
Fear in Havana
"SIR, OPEN YOUR bags, please." My father lifts his enormous suitcases up on to the counter and unzips them. The customs official's eyes widen."What's all this for?" he asks my father. He does not wait for an answer, but thrusts his hands into the first...
Yangon in shades of grey
IN ONLY ONE South-East Asian city I have visited can visitors walk around without fear of crime. The streets are paved with classic restaurants and teahouses, but the ubiquitous sights of McDonald's banners and neon Coca-Cola signs are nowhere to be seen; corporate America...
Bush vs Guardian: 1–0
IT STARTED AS "a quixotic idea dreamed up last month in a north London pub", wrote Ian Katz, feature editor at the Guardian newspaper and mastermind behind Operation Clark County. The idea was to reduce President George W. Bush's vote in the November 2004 election by...
Snapshots
BEN BASTER ARRIVED mid-afternoon in the city that his guidebook called an "exotic and teeming tropical metropolis". After a long stopover at Changi Airport, followed by a turbulent three-hour flight, followed by a debilitating drive in an airless mini-van to a three-star hotel, he...
The bridge
And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?They were, those people, a kind of solution.C.P. Cavafy, Waiting for the BarbariansI AM THE last of my group – the others are all dead or have gone missing – and before me lies the...
Featured Contributors
Chalmers Johnson (1931–2010)
Chalmers Johnson (1931–2010) was president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of the bestselling books Blowback and...
Oren Siedler
Oren Siedler has written and directed numerous documentaries and short films.Born in New York City, Oren immigrated with her...
Sally Breen
Sally Breen is the author of The Casuals (2011) and Atomic City (2013), and is senior lecturer in writing...
Martin Amis
Martin Amis is regarded by many critics as one of the most influential and innovative voices in contemporary British...
