Dislocation and flight

Bob Ellis, Night Thoughts in Time of War (Viking, 2004); Richard Lunn, Leaving Year Zero: Stories of Surviving Pol Pot's Cambodia (University of Western Australia Press, 2004); Jennifer Zeng (translated by Sue Wiles), Witnessing History: One Woman's Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong (Allen and Unwin, 2005). Exile, alienation, dislocation and rejection are the unifying themes of these three books. None makes for happy reading and all three authors nurture a deep sense of grievance. All three books are Australian in one sense or another, yet their themes scarcely would have been conceivable as "Australian" in any sense at all, even just a couple of decades ago. Thus, these books are in themselves remarkable testimonies to a process of cultural transformation. In two of the books, Leaving Year Zero and Witnessing History, Australia is a place of refuge, a sanctuary from homelands where life had become intolerable. In the third, Night Thoughts in Time of War, an Australian flees his homeland, in heart and mind if not in body, disillusioned with what a heartless place he feels it has become - a sanctuary no more.