A sweeping view of Asia and the Pacific through a series of literary essays written by Australian Russell Darnley, who earned an OAM for services he provided after the Bali Bombings.
Malaria, cockfights and magic are confronting realities in the Asia-Pacific region, yet beyond these more remains unseen and misunderstood. These cultures also exert an unacknowledged influence far beyond their borders.
Inspired by one family’s experience over three generations these tales are cradled in real events. Frailty of memory, the natural passing of people and the need to protect others, has rendered some into fiction.
Central to this work is the idea that interactions with people from outside our culture challenge our expectations. Meanings and understandings must often be negotiated in intangible, non-rational and unseen ways. Foucault’s notion of the third space has influenced this work, as has the Balinese belief that reality is an interaction of Sekala (the Seen) and Niskala (the Unseen).
The unseen also has a political dimension here: “the elephant in the room”. Choosing not to see, comforted by one’s own culture alone, is to ignore that regional and global events are unfettered by such introspection.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
With his hard-won insights and descriptive powers of observation, Russell Darnley is a cultural interpreter of the first rank.
The captivating stories of his travels – Seen & Unseen, is part treatise, part personal remembrance, part genealogy, part travelogue, part intellectual autobiography and part coming-of-age novel. Darnley unpicks the intriguing myths of Southeast Asia, a region that he has loved and chronicled his whole academic life. Let yourself be taken along on this writer’s eye-opening and introspective journey of discovery that began from the moment he first stepped into Asia more than four decades ago. This evocative and engaging memoir intertwining anthropology, economics, history and terrorism will resonate with all lovers of Asia.”
– Bill Dalton, journalist and author of the original Indonesia handbook
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
It’s a very candid and wonderfully written account of the Bali Bombings. Pretty hard to read actually, emotionally. I guess the ghosts never really go away, do they?
– Kim Patra, author, In the Arms of Angels: memoirs of a medical volunteer, Bali, October 2002
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Russell Darnley, cross cultural educator, historian, political buff, spiritual seeker and entrepreneur, shares stories of his life lived to the full, from a boyhood by the sea in postwar Sydney, through deep involvement in Australia’s often stumbling awakening to Asia. This is an absorbing, intriguing, illuminating memoir and, delivered with a fine balance of passion, humour and wisdom, a profound observation of the seen with a growing awareness of the power of the unseen.
– Des Walsh, Executive Leadership Coach.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Russ’ wanderings in Asia have led him to explore the way that even in our own supposedly rational culture, the physical and the present diffuse into the metaphysical and a state where time and place have no meaning. This may be the real way in which our engagement with Asia enriches us, not materially but by leading us to see the riches within.
– Associate Professor Aidan, Foy Specialist Physician
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
This is partly creative fiction though it’s based on his own life and I think of it of keeping to a tradition of writing on Asia. I remember the excitement back in 1978 when Chris Koch published The Year of Living Dangerously then in 1980 Blanche D’Alpuget published Monkeys in the Dark and in 1981 Turtle Beach. Robert Drew in 1981 published A Cry in the Jungle Bar.
When I look at the similarity of those four novels in each of those Australians go forward full of high ideals and anticipation but in fact come home defeated, physically wounded or psychologically wounded or in the case of the hero of A Cry in the Jungle Bar actually dead.
So I think this is a new and more mature and more realistic mood in Russell Darnley’s book. The Australian doesn’t go out with high hopes to Asia, gets defeated and returns partially destroyed, certainly damaged. In him it’s a much more complex engagement, it has of course its fears, its dangers, its sicknesses but it’s much more mature in its approach to the complexities of these enmeshments.
– Associate Professor David Reeve, Visiting Fellow UNSW
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Sometimes distance can help us recast our perceptions of the world. They can be based on unspoken and wrong assumptions about culture and identity. The Australian author, currently based in Singapore, but who is fluent in Indonesian because of having provided extensive cultural tours in his former career, is well positioned to recast such perceptions. He forces us to ask: is Australia’s relationship with Asia working well enough to bridge the cultural divide?
Darnley’s exceptional debut work, in part, creative non-fiction, essays and travel pieces, reframes Australia’s relationship with Asia and Melanesia in a myriad of ways.
There are entertaining stories over 50 years, which traverse Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, PNG, just to name the main places. There’s a story set in Bali about adultery and told through the prism of magic; another one reflects upon Baby Boomers and their perception of the Japanese after WW2, and there’s a hilarious one about an activist uni student who dodges the Vietnam War draft.
The book also reframes Australia’s identity. Does Australia lean more towards being progressive or conservative or vacillate between both, and how might this impact on our relationship with Asia?
Through many personal journeys, observations and interesting characters, he illuminates and expands upon the notion, which is at the heart of the book. What we sometimes see in an empirical way is not necessarily what lies underneath. There are intangible structures such us cultural practice, memory, spirituality and power relationships which intersect, weave and give rise to more nuanced complexity than what we can fully rationalise or even articulate at a given point in time.
Seen and Unseen is an insightful, intelligent and very significant book which helps us learn more about the Asian region and ourselves as Australians.
– T. D. Luong, Amazon Reviwer