The Distant Voices

Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist and film-maker, John Pilger has looked behind the 'official' versions of events to report the real stories of our time. The centrepiece of this new, expanded edition of his bestselling Distant Voices is Pilger's reporting from East Timor, which he entered secretly in 1993 and where a third of the population has died as a result of Indonesia's genocidal policies. This edition also contains more new material as well as all the original essays - from the myth-making of the Gulf War to the surreal pleasures of Disneyland. Breaking through the consensual silence, Pilger pays tribute to those dissenting voices we are seldom permitted to hear.

In her second volume of short stories, which follows the hugely successful 'Encounters', Barbara Erskine has created a compelling world of love, betrayal, suspense and grief.

Distant Voice, Distant Rooms is loosely based on my partner's many years spent behind the walls of mental institutions. It is factual in the humor that Megan, the main character, holds dear, and in the perseverance of strong women everywhere. The book talks of a woman's discovery of life outside of mental institutions. At forty, Megan begins to find that her disability can be her greatest ally, given the right direction. During Megan's journey through schizophrenia, she will open up to the voices held behind the walls of therapy. Her strong passion for life delves deep into the humor that saves her in the end. Megan is based on my spouse of eleven years. She has spent twenty-plus years in institutions and thirty-plus years in therapy. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she deals with multiple voices in her head every second of every hour of every day of her life. She has inspired many to understand that being disabled does not mean you are not whole, and that being incarcerated by mental illness does not mean you cannot overcome.

"Distant voices drawing near is a tribute to the scholarly career of Antoinette Clark Wire, the Robert S. Dollar Professor of New Testament at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. In recognition of her work, the contributors to the volume have critically engaged the areas of Christian origins and the role of women in the biblical world, hermeneutics and feminist perspectives in biblical interpretation, and cross-cultural study of the Bible."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A woman is trying to contact Kasama Tsuneo at a crisis point in his life. But she won't reveal her identity. Kasama is an immigration officer in Tokyo, struggling to live a 'normal' life after an event that happened eight years previously, when he lived in the USA. His arranged marriage is looming, and he's seized by a strange emotional fit. And then the disembodied voice begins. All Tsuneo can do is desperately chase this woman, and the mystery behind what happened eight years earlier over the sea.

Thirty short stories. By the author of Midnight is a lonely place and House of echoes.