Author: Judith White
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Event for Sydney readers: Alex Mitchell with Hall Greenland
Tuesday April 16, 6pm, Better Read Than Dead Bookshop, 265 King Street, Newtown (upstairs room). Alex and Hall Greenland (pictured), author of Red Hot and Greens candidate for Grayndler, will discuss the current ICAC inquiry, the future of the NSW Labor Party and the upcoming federal election.
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Cyprus, the pundits and Geldof
Yesterday the media across Europe were full of the news that Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister and head of the Eurozone group, had let the cat out of the bag. Cyprus, he had said, showed the way forward in dealing with bailouts, by going after private investors and bank accounts. He had to water down…
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Italian drama is no joke
Italy remains without a viable government a fortnight after the national election. Many in the media have treated the result as just another round of the country’s political circus, of interest only because of such bizarre candidates as convicted fraudster Silvio Berlusconi and populist comedian Beppe Grillo. The result gave Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S)…
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In search of solitude
Half a lifetime ago I set out for Colombia in search of the historical background to One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel by the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What I found was an unforgettable lesson about truth and fiction. Prompted by the sad news that Garcia Marquez will write no more – he has…
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The world on our doorstep
I’ve just been to Brisbane to see the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art – APT for short. The Queensland Art Gallery initiated the project almost 20 years ago, and it remains the only major gallery exhibition series in the world devoted to Asian contemporary art. When I first visited Brisbane back in 1986 it…
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Our man at the Drill Hall
My good friend Terence Maloon, who curated some of the finest exhibitions of recent years at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has just been appointed director of the Drill Hall gallery at the Australian National University. He has been welcomed in the Canberra Times with a perceptive interview by Ron Cerabona. In discussing…
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Looking for Garcia Marquez
Half a lifetime ago, when I was a student, I went to Colombia in search of the historical background to the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Recently there came news that there will be no more books from its author, the great Gabriel García Márquez. I’ve been moved to write an account of my…
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Never mind Greece, what about France?
Eurozone finance ministers did a deal earlier this week to make a partial reduction in Greece’s debt and permit an 11th-hour, 34bn euro bailout. But the deal, presented as a win-win for Greece and its creditors, depends on Athens borrowing a further 14bn euros to finance a bond buyback scheme that the Greek finance sector…
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A many-splendoured writer
Han Suyin, who died in Lausanne last week at the age of 96, was a writer who bridged cultures. Born in imperial China of a Flemish Belgian mother and a Chinese father, she was best known in her lifetime as the author of the 1952 satirical novel of Hong Kong expat life, A Many-Splendoured Thing,…
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Nervous days in the Euro zone
Europe waits nervously for the latest deadline in the Greek crisis. The coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has only days to meet the EU Troika’s draconian $13.5 billion package of cuts, after three months of talks have failed to bring agreement. The stumbling block within the coalition appears to be a newly-imposed demand…