Book Description
BradyGames' Far Cry Instincts Official Strategy Guide includes the following:
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Features detailed walkthrough with expert strategies for all single-player missions in the game.
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Helpful area maps indicate enemy and vehicle locations, key paths through areas and more.
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Complete multiplayer section includes strategies and maps for each multiplayer level.
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Exhaustive coverage of all weapons, vehicles and items in the game.
Platform: Xbox
Genre: Action
This product is available for sale in North America only.
Customer Reviews:
Far Cry Instincts.......2006-03-15
The Guide was very helpful. It really let me understand the game better. It was worth the money.
Book Description
BradyGames' Far Cry Official Strategy Guide features a comprehensive walkthrough for every mission. Complete coverage of every element in the game that is new to the FPS action genre. Locations of all weapons and items revealed! Game secrets and more!
This product is available for sale worldwide, excluding France, Germany & Japan.
Average customer rating:
- A quick read, a sharp wit
- Fun read but this book is being oversold
- Speaking Truth To Power -- And Parasites
- No half portions here - read in full
- A Long Way From Home
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A Far Cry from Kensington
Muriel Spark
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
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Loitering with Intent
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The Comforters (Revived Modern Classic)
ASIN: 0811214575 |
Book Description
Set on the crazier fringes of 1950s literary London, A Far Cry from Kensington is a delight, hilariously portraying love, fraud, death, evil, and transformation. Mrs. Hawkins, the majestic narrator of A Far Cry from Kensington, takes us well in hand, and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London. There, as a fat and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books") and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming-house. At work and at home Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovered evil: shady literary doings and a deadly enemy; anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. With aplomb, however, Mrs. Hawkins confidently set about putting things to order, little imagining the mayhem which would ensue. Now decades older, thin, successful, and delighted with life in Italy -- quite a far cry from Kensington -- Mrs. Hawkins looks back to all those dark doings, and recounts how her own life changed forever. She still, however, loves to give advice: "It's easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half....I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book." A masterwork by "Britain's greatest living novelist" (Sunday Telegraph, 1999), A Far Cry from Kensington has been hailed as "outstanding" (The Observer) and "wickedly and adroitly executed"(The New York Times). "Far Cry is, among other things, a comedy that holds a tragedy as an egg-cup holds an egg" (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Customer Reviews:
A quick read, a sharp wit.......2007-09-22
I agree with jt from New Jersey. I picked up "Far Cry" based on its review in the NY Time Book Review in 1986 (front page coverage). If you simply accept Mrs. Hawkins at face value you will fall in love with the setting, the time and Mrs. Hawkins approach to life.
Perhaps the book has a special place in my heart because I read it in a hotel bar overlooking the Arno in Florence while my pregnant wife was resting upstairs. I still reread the book and remember the bar. Funny.
Fun read but this book is being oversold.......2006-08-18
I enjoyed "A Far Cry from Kensington" and recommend it. It's an entertaining story about an overweight young editor who matures in many ways (weight loss, new romance) over the course of the novel and exhibits strength of character in overcoming various tribulations. When she puts down a toadying literary hanger-on, this unpleasant person becomes something like a stalker. A good yarn; the last chapterlet is bang-up. It's one of those novels, which I think are pretty rare, where the last two pages are the best part.
I am a big Muriel Spark fan -- I mourned her passing earlier this year -- and was very interested in a book that is generally accepted as a companion novel to the brilliant "Loitering with Intent", one of my favorites. I was particularly intrigued given the reviews on amazon. So I want to caution prospective readers that there's no way that this is up to Spark's best work. It simply doesn't have the resonance or mysterious allusiveness that some of Spark's other books have. It's kind of a throwaway, in fact. So I think some of the reviewers below are getting carried away and overpraising the novel. Open it with reasonable expectations and you have an entertaining, intriguing tale ahead of you.
Speaking Truth To Power -- And Parasites .......2005-06-22
Muriel Spark's A Far Cry From Kensington (1988) is the bookend companion to her 1981 classic, Loitering With Intent. Both novels share a common theme, and like the earlier novel, A Far Cry From Kensington is largely autobiographical and takes place in virtually the same setting and time period: the literary world of early Fifties London. Both are explorations, via reminiscence, of the banality of everyday evil, taking place among the workaday, routine lives of the lower middle class. Less scathing if no less hilarious than many of its predecessors, the relatively unsung A Far Cry From Kensington is the most realistic and humane novel among the twenty-odd Spark has written. It is also exceptional in that it is the single Spark fiction in which a love affair blossoms into a successful relationship of duration.
The story of the universally respected though immensely overweight Mrs. Hawkins, A Far Cry From Kensington follows two divergent threads in her daily life: the mounting sufferings of a rooming house neighbor who is being anonymously threatened, and the problems that stem from her own continuous encounters with Hector Bartlett, a manipulative sycophant who hopes to use her footholds in the publishing world to advance his nonexistent literary career.
While Loitering With Intent can be read as something of a tactical combat manual, A Far Cry From Kensington is instructive in the art of deduction: caught up in a spiraling series of mysterious and increasingly serious coincidences, Mrs. Hawkins, short of both hard facts and physical evidence, actively unravels the odd events that are taking a toll on both the lives of her friends and her editorial career. Fully realizing she is as prone to misjudgment as anyone, Mrs. Hawkins, utilizing her intelligence, intuition, and instinct, nonetheless proceeds confidently and assertively to pierce the veil of secrecy and quiet conspiracy engulfing her. Spark is at a creative peak as she reveals the subtle turns, nuances, and moment to moment impressions in Mrs. Hawkins' mind as she forms her cautious conclusions.
Unlike Spark's finest novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), in which a significant portion of the mystery of human existence is shown to exist on a partially transcendent level, A Far Cry From Kensington eventually grounds that mystery in the knowable everyday. Though the author was to return to something of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie's vision in Symposium (1990), here she seems to be expressing that at least the mundane truths of human life can be ascertained by diligence of method, applied intelligence, and a fundamental willingness to be believe that some people are unabashedly predatory, unscrupulous, and ethically coarse at best. Another message of the novel is that the weak, the foolish, and the vacuous are among the most potentially dangerous individuals one can become involved with.
Upon its release, a number of critics publicly objected with pointed distaste to some of Mrs. Hawkin's behavior, she who enjoys "a puritanical and moralistic nature; it is my happy element to judge between right and wrong, regardless of what I might actually do." For exhausted with Hector Bartlett's elaborate attempts at manipulation, unhypocritical Mrs. Hawkins calls him a "Pissseur de copie" to his face when she encounters him in a public park, and continues to do so, to the detriment of her publishing career, throughout the novel. "It seemed to me," she says, that he "vomited literary matter, he urinated and sweated, he excreted it." Far from keeping this observation to herself, Mrs. Hawkins loudly shares it with authors, editors, and publishers, and since Hector is protected by best-selling author Emma Loy, finds herself fired from one job after another. But Mrs. Hawkins is without regret: "I can't help it. Sometimes the words just come out and I can't stop it. It feels like preaching the gospel." Thus in this and other passages, A Far Cry From Kensington supports speaking one's perception of truth under certain circumstances, regardless of consequence, even if that truth represents an enormous breach of upper class WASP manners and social decorum.
In Spark's vision as expressed here, building relationships of any kind solely for personal gain, manipulating others through callous, self-interested `networking,' and general toadyism are high crimes, all of which Hector Bartlett is guilty of in the extreme. In fact, Hector is one of Camille Paglia's "court hermaphrodites": "red hair en brosse, brown corduroy trousers, tweed coat with leather patches on the sleeves, a yellow tie and a green shirt: this was gaudy in those days, and Hector Bartlett was always dressed in bright colors. He was tall, with a pronounced stoop of the shoulders, which made him seem older than he was - I imagine at the time, he would be in his mid-thirties. His face was round with a second fat chin. He had a small but full baby-mouth as if forever asking to suck a dummy teat." Though many critics have felt otherwise, no amount condescending liberal piety can excuse Hector's routine aggressive subterfuge, moral mediocrity, and parasitic nature. It's unlikely that Spark chose this character's name randomly: "hectoring" is exactly what this he often does to those he encounters, and `Bartlett' suggests his "pudgy," pear-shaped physique.
Written in the plainest language possible but poetically conceived and executed, A Far Cry From Kensington belongs, with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means (1963), The Driver's Seat (1970), The Takeover (1976), and Loitering With Intent, among others, with the very best of Spark's work.
No half portions here - read in full.......2004-07-10
This is one of those books that cannot described in a nutshell. If you had to hazard a guess at a description, you'd have to place it firmly in the comedy/ tragedy/ drama/ mystery/ romance section, or simply file it under Spark: Muriel in the Classics section.
Narrated by the once round and central character, Agnes Hawkins (a.k.a. Mrs. Hawkins or Nancy), the story revolves around her experiences as a young widow living in furnished rooms in a semi-detached building in South Kensington. She colorfully describes her neighbors and acquaintances, and gives us tantalizing glimpses into their little secret worlds, in which she is a trustee and confidante.
Despite the mysterious black boxes and the lurking threat of enemies, known and unknown, our heroine manages to keep her head above water, remains a pillar of strength and finds true love among the rubble. Thanks to her diet plan (freely given to the reader as a bonus for purchasing the book), she gains new self-respect, and reinvents herself in a new country, a far cry from her humble beginnings.
A simple classic by an inspired writer.
Amanda Richards
A Long Way From Home.......2004-04-12
I picked up a copy of Muriel Sparks, "A Far Cry from Kensington" on a friend's recommendation, and I loved it. Mrs. Nancy. Hawkins, the main character is a woman that everyone depends upon and needs to talk with. She has that certain way about her that summons trust and understanding. The fact that her figure is zaftig and that she is a widow lends credence she believes to her trust factor.
Mrs. Hawkins tells her story from a 30 year distance. It is 1954, post World War II, and she is living in a furnished room near Kensington. She has several neighbors of interest and Milly the landlady, was one of the more interesting. She was also a widow and was
Known as an organizer, She was able to organize everyone and everything. Basil and Eva Carlin were a quiet couple and lived on the first floor. Wanda Podolak lived next to them. She was a Polish dressmaker. Kate Parker lived at the end of the hall. She was a district nurse and suffered no germs at all- she was constantly cleaning. On the attic floor, lived a medical student William Todd.
Mrs. Hawkins was an editor at a publishing house and in due time she lost her job and went on to several others. She was excellent at her job, and, of course, everyone confided in her. She knew everything that was going on with everyone. Like the rooming house she lived in, Mrs. Hawkins spent her days and evenings giving advice. The rooming house becomes involved with Wanda and her anonymous letters that turn into blackmail and eventually into big trouble. Along the way, we meet Hector Bartlett, a charlatan who turns many lives upside down.
Mrs. Hawkins gives advice to many and one day she looks in the mirror and discovers that she is too obese. She resolves to lose weight, and by eating only half portions and then quarter portions, she does just that. Her fine bone structure is revealed, and her new body structure also attracts many men. She finds herself in a relationship with William Todd the medical student, which eventually turns into a marriage. Thirty years later,
Mrs. Hawkins, so wonderfully happy with her life in Italy, "a far cry from Kensington",
looks back at her life and continues to offer us advice.
Muriel Sparks has been called "Britain's greatest living novelist", and she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1993 and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1996. She lives in Tuscany, Italy. An outstanding story, told by a wonderful novelist. prisrob
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The Far Cry
Emma Smith
Manufacturer: Persephone Books
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Binding: Paperback
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The History Boys: A Play
ASIN: 1903155231 |
Customer Reviews:
A second Voyage Out.......2004-07-16
Emma Smith wrote only two novels in the late 40s before she married and put away her typewriter for decades; they were bestsellers and were critically acclaimed, yet they remain today largely forgotten. The Persephone Press has reissued one of them, THE FAR CRY, and like its central characters it is odd and difficult to appreciate at first but well worth it in the end. Fourteen year-old Tersea is pulled out of school by her cantankerous and dislikeable father to go to India with him simply to spite her mother, from whom her father is estranged and who is coming to England to reclaim her; in India, he hopes to reunite with his other daughter from a previous marriage, the lovely Ruth. For the first hundred pages or so this book is very hard-going: the characters seem not only unlikeable but also unloveable, and you wonder why you put up with them. Like Forster in his rougher early fiction (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD and THE LONGEST JOURNEY), which seem among her clearest models, Emma Smith seems intent on showing us the worst side of people: the luxury of a bright and alienated young author, perhaps. But when Teresa and her father get to India, everything changes: their responses to this nation unknown to them show them to be capabnle of stronger sensibilities and reactions then we supposed, and when they arrive at the house of Ruth and her husband in Assam (both of whom are themselves strongly realized characters) we feel we know them much more thoroughly, and Smith's wider precocious pattern makes more sense.
It may be objected of this book (as Salman Rushdie objected to Paul Scott's RAJ QUARTET, which four novels this book anticipates in many ways) that Smith uses India only as a backdrop for her Anglo-Indian characters' problems, and is content to have the Indians in her novel only play walk-ons in their own country. There is no real answer to such a charge, because Smith is concerned with India mostly in terms of the distance and immensity it implies for central Anglo-Indian family, and what it says about their own problems regarding human contact and friendship. In this the novel seems much like another early Bloomsbury novel, Woolf's THE VOYAGE OUT, which is the clearest of all precursors for this work. But unlike Woolf's imagined South American country, the India Smith uses as the backdrop for her character's Bildungsroman is real, and was really observed, and Smith's powers of description are exceptional. This is not an easy novel to like, but I think it is well worth the effort.
Average customer rating:
- Haunting, unforgettable story of murder and obsession
- Noirish tale of murder and obsession.
- A masterpiece of low-key suspense
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THE FAR CRY
Fredric Brown
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0679734694
Release Date: 1991-07-02 |
Customer Reviews:
Haunting, unforgettable story of murder and obsession.......2006-10-21
An alcoholic, middle-aged businessman takes a summer vaction in a remote part of New Mexico, on the advice of his doctor. George Weaver is recovering from a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork and the tensions of his unhappy marriage. He rents an abandoned house where a murder took place a few years earlier, and is urged by a writer friend to research the unsolved crime and write an article about it for a true crime magazine. What begins as a mild curiosity and the need to keep busy result in Weaver becoming completely obsessed with the case, and the murder victim. He becomes involved with the details of the young woman's tragic death to the point that it takes over his life completely, made worse by his increasingly heavy drinking. He is not pleased to learn that his wife is planning on joining him soon, and makes careful preparations so that she will not find out what he has been up to. In effect, he is having an affair with the memory of the murdered girl. To say more would be to spoil a truly gripping story. The book's readers will find themselves drawn into the strange story of the murder and Weaver's obsession with the same desperate eagerness to investigate that the character feels. One becomes totally involved in the mystery and the potential madness that Weaver risks succumbing to. Brown creates a fascinating mystery and peoples it with quirky but believable characters. The Taos setting and the mountains are vividly described. The geography and landscape become integral parts of the story. Weaver is a very flawed and unhappy man, but Brown makes him interesting and sympathetic enough for readers to identify with his strange quest. This is truly an unforgettable story, and it is surprising that it's not better known. For a compelling, unusual tale that will hold the reader in thrall from beginning to end, I cannot recommend The Far Cry enough.
Noirish tale of murder and obsession........2002-09-22
THE FAR CRY was first published in 1951, and is considered one of Fredric Brown's best mystery novels, which is saying something indeed, considering how many great ones he penned. Slightly different from his famous "Ed and Am Hunter" series of novels about a uncle and nephew team of Private Eyes, THE FAR CRY is more of a downbeat noir type of thriller, dwelling as it does on the main character's growing depression regarding his own marriage and career, coupled with a burgeoning obsession on his part with the mystery surrounding an 8 year old murder of a girl he never knew, but whom he has become compulsively attracted to.
George Weaver is a middle aged Kansas City real estate man, unhappily married, father of two, and recovering from a nervous breakdown. His doctor recommends a summer of peace and relaxation, away from his business and family concerns. To achieve this he rents a small primitive house a few miles outside of Taos, New Mexico. The only problem is that the same house was once the scene of a grisly murder. Eight years previously a young woman named Jenny Ames had come to meet a man who she thought wished to marry her. Instead the same man, an aspiring artist named Nelson, killed Jenny with a kitchen knife and then buried her body a quarter mile from the house, the very house that Weaver is now renting.
Try as he might, Weaver can not get the events of 8 years previous out of his mind. He begins to investigate the murder and the mysterious events leading up to it. At first he believes that he will write an article and profit from it, also that investigating it will help detour his thoughts from contemplation of his own unhappy marriage, but as the summer progresses he finds himself more and more obsessed with the young Jenny Ames. To tell any more of the plot would be a spoiler, simply suffice it to say that Brown delivers as usual. I definitely recommend this one for those who like their noir dished up with believable characters and suspense.
A masterpiece of low-key suspense.......1999-11-17
It's really sad to see this book out of print, and I hope Black Lizard or another reprint series will consider reviving it. This is a masterpiece of low-key suspense. Frederick Brown uses great subtlety to gradually introduce the mystery and draw the protagonist into it. The murdered woman in the story has a ghost-like presence; but the way she haunts the tale is much more credible than a supernatural tale.
The protagonist is fascinating because he seems so banal. He's no hero, and seemingly no villain, but a man forced by circumstances and finances to endure a bland, lonely, meaningless existence. It is this vacuum of meaning in his life that draws him to be obsessed with this murder victim from the past.
This is one of my all-time favorite mysteries.
Brown's other books are also quite worthwhile, especially MY NAME IS DEATH and THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT.
Average customer rating:
- A clever engaging mystery
- TERIS NOVEL IS SUPERb! I COULDNT PUT IT DOWN!
- Superb
- Well crafted and well developed.
- A Near and Deadly Formula
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A Far and Deadly Cry
Teri Holbrook
Manufacturer: Crimeline
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Sad Water
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The Grass Widow
ASIN: 0553568590
Release Date: 1995-08-01 |
Book Description
The crime scene showed that a cunning mind and a passionate hatred lay behind the killing of Lisa Stillwell. But New Scotland Yard would not have been called to this remote Hampshire village if the baby-sitter's employer hadn't been Gale Grayson, a self-exiled American with a suspicious past. Three years before, Chief Inspector Daniel Halford had watched helplessly as Gale's husband put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger -- seconds before Halford could arrest him for terrorism. Halford has never forgotten the scene or the pregnant young widow whose life was shattered -- and as he questions her now, he finds past and present emotions blurring his judgment. Yet piece by piece he is discovering some unsettling truths about the life of Lisa Stillwell... and a chilling picture is forming of a village that is not quite as sleepy as it seems.
Customer Reviews:
A clever engaging mystery .......2005-08-05
A quiet English village a simple bicycle accident, that turns out to be murder. Nothing peculiar about the case except 22 year old Lisa Stillwell was Gale Grayson's child-minder. Gale is the notorious widow of Tom Grayson who three years ago killed himself in the middle of the town church rather than face the police who were closing in to arrest him for terrorism.
Now as the final repairs are about to be completed on the church, enter Chief Inspector Daniel Halford of New Scotland Yard who is himself trying to exercise his own demons over Tom's botched arrest. He has never quite gotten over leaving a devastated five months pregnant Gale to face an uncertain future and a past of betrayal.
Returning now to Fetherbridge CI Halford and Detective Sargent Maura Ramsden find that everyone in the "idyllic" village has either a motive or agenda of their own. As for the precious towns "daughter", Lisa Stillwell, may have been vicious and divisive manipulator and any number of the constabulary might have wanted her dead. And then there is Gale, who with her own strong motive to protect her daughter has also never been truly forgiven by the town for her poet/terrorist husbands misdeeds.
Although several times I thought I had it solved, even at one point even suspecting the right character, I was still surprised by the ending. This novel is full of interesting characters, from gossiping old biddies to eccentric jealous artists every character is engaging. I am looking forward to reading the next installment in the series.
TERIS NOVEL IS SUPERb! I COULDNT PUT IT DOWN!.......2002-08-31
I loved this book! It was awesome!!! GO BUY IT NOW!!!!! Teri Holbrook is the best writer ever!! Buy her other books too! If you love mysteries youll love this too!! NO WONDER IT WAS NOMINATED FOR NUMEROUS AWARDS! Holbrook is a genius!! i just wish i could give it more stars!!
Superb.......2002-08-08
Three years ago in the remote Hampshire village of Fetherbridge, New Scotland Yard and the local constabulary are involved in a siege at a place of worship. They were trying to arrest Tom Grayson on terrorism charges but things went drastically wrong. Tom and his then-pregnant wife, Gale are holed up inside a church trying to escape the police. When the police decide to storm the building Tom shoots himself and leaves Gale as a grieving widow.
Time has passed since the tragic event and Gale is moving up with her life. She is still living in the same village working as a writer and taking care of her daughter, Katie Pru. Her peaceful life will be shattered when Katie Pru's baby sitter is found murdered in a village road.
Chief Inspector Daniel Halford and Detective Sergeant Maura Ramsden are sent to Fetherbridge to investigate the murder of Lisa Stillwell. The main reason they were assigned to the case is because they participated in the failed arrest of Tom Grayson. They both have serious misgivings after they are convinced that Gale was innocent of her husband's crimes. They also remember the locals and the locals remember them. Hopefully, they will be able to solve the case quickly but that will not be the case. There is a lot of resentment with New Scotland Yard regarding their attack on the town and some of the townspeople hate Gale Grayson.
Ms. Holbrook does an excellent job with this novel by not creating flat characters. All of the major players are well-developed and they evolve as the story goes along. No one had a reason to hate 22-year-old Lisa Stillwell but as the investigation ensues we learn that that is not the case. The story is complex and well-structured with a satisfactory conclusion to the story. The author is clearly influenced by the works of P.D. James and her books do not disappoint.
Teri Holbrook's novels have been nominated for several awards, more recently an Edgar-award nomination for THE MOTHER'S TONGUE. The author knows how to structure a good story and hopefully we will see more of her Gale Grayson novels in the future. Her books deserve the highest possible recommendation.
Well crafted and well developed........2002-07-19
This is a lyrical and well-realised story; unlike what one of the other reviewers thought (were we reading the same book?), I found it to be coherent and eminently readable. In fact, I ended up sitting up with a booklight and finishing it in the wee small hours a.m.
The plot is believable and has the necessary twists to create that degree of uncertainty which keeps the best mysteries moving along; I was disappointed that I had figured out whodunnit by chapter 3, but then the doubts started to creep in, and I was delighted to find out by the end of the book that I had been wrong. It is not an earth-shaking plot, but it is a life-shaking one, in this small community where the story is set.
However, Holbrook's great strength is her ability to create depth in the characters and backgrounds. The setting is rich and believable. There are no "cardboard characters" or two-dimensional bit-part players -- everyone is given enough detail to be a real person to the mind's eye, which is as it should be. One gets the sense of peering in at other people's lives, starting somewhere in the middle of their stories, which began before you were there and which will continue after you are no longer looking. Not everyone is sympathetic, and there are disjunctions between how characters see themselves and how they are seen by other people, and disjunctions between the versions of events as seen by different people. This, too, I found to be true-to-life; from what I've seen, that is the way the real world works. The thread that holds it together is that again, this is done believably rather than randomly, everyone has a real and believable motivation, the characters are internally consistent, and they are all visibly affecting each others' lives.
The only reason I give this four stars rather than five is the uncomfortable feeling that there *are* bits of story that we should know, and don't. The author probably left them out deliberately in order that we discover them later (or infer them as we go along), but a couple of times I found myself double-checking just to make sure I hadn't accidentally started with the second book of a series.
I will certainly be buying the rest of her books.
A Near and Deadly Formula.......2001-09-30
This collection of near-random paragraphs, foolish inconsistencies, and perfectly horrible analogies kept me laughing most of the evening. I am glad Holbrook acknowledged her agent and editors by name; none of them is worthy of the title.
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A Far Cry from Home: Life in a Shelter for Homeless Women
Lisa Ferrill
Manufacturer: Noble Press Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0962268364 |
Customer Reviews:
A reality check.......2006-06-01
Those of us who have families and homes pretend the homeless don't exist. The author of this book used to do that too until she accepted a traineeship position from her school to help out at a women's shelter. I am thankful for what I have, meager as it may be because it is way more than some people have. I hope and wish that someday we can get the homeless a GOOD place to live. One free of abuse, crime and mental illness and full of privacy, love, happiness, hope and health. This book has motivated me to look into the homeless of my city and see if there is someway I can help.
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A Far Cry: The Making of a South African (Ravan Writers Series)
Mary Benson
Manufacturer: Ravan Press
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ASIN: 0869754866 |
Book Description
From the author of Kundun, a powerful work that reveals the true horrors behind China's "liberation" of Tibet
Since 1959, when China claimed power over this tiny mountain nation, more than one million Tibetans are believed to have perished by starvation, execution, imprisonment, and abortive uprisings. Many thousands more, including their spiritual and political leader, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, have been driven into exile.
The country has been systematically colonized, so that indigenous inhabitants are now a second-class minority. Not only are Tibetans being squeezed out by Chinese settlers, but there are reports of Tibetan women being forcibly sterilized and of healthy full-term babies being killed at birth. Thousands of Tibetans languish in prison and suffer appalling torture. Rich mineral resources have been plundered and the delicate ecosystem devastated. Buddhism, the life blood of Tibet, has been ruthlessly suppressed.
Mary Craig tells the story of Tibet with candor and power. Based upon extensive research and interviews with large numbers of refugees now living in exile in India, this book presents four decades of religious persecution, environmental devastation, and human atrocities that have caused Tibetans to weep "tears of blood."
Customer Reviews:
A bit depressing.......2007-09-22
This book was a bit depressing - there is no doubt that what the Chinese did in Tibet was horrendous . . . and depressing. But this book doesn't stop -- its just one horrible thing after another . . . I thought Patrick French's Tibet Tibet gave a better overall feel and balance for what has happened in Tibet over the last 50 years.
WOW, what sadness........2006-10-31
I never heard of the term "thamzing", but this book is full of primary sources or accounts of public torture and Chinese communist lies. I cried several times reading this book due to the horrible accounts. There is a real cry, by many of the tortured... why do so many people not believe them?
Progress, by no means is worth any human loss of life.
balanced, thoughtful approach to tibet.......2003-07-18
Genocide. Ecocide. ugly words, but far worse is the actual doing of these atrocities. the book is passionate without being preachy, balanced in trying to stick to the facts without over dramatizing them. its is well written and easily read, convincing and deeply saddening. a must read for anyone desirous of knowing what is going on on The Roof of the World.
realpolitik versus the faith of the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet. chinese communist with the millenium old chinese racism and serious blindness to all things not-chinese versus poor, buddhist, hill people. Tibet is loosing and may already have lost.
One thing missing from the book is an impassioned and reasonable plead of why the West, European and American people should give a damn about what happens in such a remote, poor, unimportant part of the world. her argument stems only from a call to justice and a call to the unity of humanity. and this is relatively unspoken. it is assumed in her passion for the people and Tibet and justice for there case.
Give me a minute to argue the Tibetan case.
1- you buy Chinese goods, these effectively support the government and allow the rape of this poor country and its people
2-there is a unity of humanity. we in the west are detribalized and owe little loyalty between the level of our families and the national governments.
3-the connectedness of all is real. for instance. ship the tibetan forests to china, silt load in the major rivers in India will be enormously increased. the destruction and flooding there will kill millions and destroy the wealth of another poor nation. this will have great effect on the military and political situation in this volitile region.
4-in is an example of the nature of chinese, communist, secular, expansionist, imperialist power at it rawist, most destructive, murderous.
5-the tibetan people through the Dalai Lama partly, but through their faith have much to teach the world, and they are doing so in actions, with their bodies and lives in a way that shames the materialist West. a very important lesson about what is really important in life.
but after all of this.
justice freedom faith
are more than words. they are deeds.
and this book will help you understand why some people are killing other people in Tibet. today. tomorrow.
Exceptional book with endless information on Tibet's losses........2001-07-09
I knew VERY LITTLE about what happened to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, until this book. It's a very good read....Please consider buying it and learning about the abuse of human rights in other parts of the world.
To understand China, Ask a Tibetan.......2000-09-25
China is now the newest trading partner for America. This bookand "In Exile from the Land of Snows" by John Avedon offer agreat deal of understanding tho the nature of the Government ofChina. If you are planning to do business or just buy the "Madein China" Label you should want to understand where much of yourinvestment goes and the horrors that your dollars pay for. This is nota read that will leave you unmoved. You will want to know more...Another Video to see is a chinese and Tibetan language film "Windhorse" Very accurate when compared to the other histories listed above and current news reports out of Tibet. For more on Tibet visit the website of the Tibetan Government in Exile at www.tibet.com or for a beginners introduction to Tibet visit www.tibetanphotoproject.com and then come back and get this book. Reading this book is a worthwhile journey in today's global marketplace.
Product Description
Many color illustrations reproduced from original intaglio prints...images are handprinted by artist, using multiple handworked copper plates...resulting in beautifully layered, richly textured images. Memoir of Canadian Rocky Mountain farm life. Dedicated to E.B. White.
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