They came from all over the world, many speaking little or no English, and many not understanding each other either. They may have left war-torn countries, but this was hardly the better life these men and families hoped to find. There were just wild rivers and wilder mountain ranges and everywhere rainforest that only ceded its reign over the land to intermittent buttongrass plains, or in the higher altitudes, to alpine moorland.” “In those cowering corrals of huts had to live the workers, for in this remote highland country of the remote island of Tasmania that lay far off the remote land of Australia, there was no other human settlement for many miles. Her Slovenian parents had migrated to Australia after WWII for a better life, and ended up living in a worker’s hut in the camp where Bojan would labour building a dam, and Maria would raise their daughter. Sonja grew up in Butlers Gorge, a construction camp in northwest Tasmania, not far from Tullah, where her father now lives. Except the rainforest and the buttongrass that would come back when this brief intrusion was over.” “For Sonja, the town of Tullah did not so much nestle in that high valley with wild mountains around all sides, as appear to be an industrial accident swept up into orderly piles, left sinking into swampy ground. Read other reviews for want of better depth.įor me, I can do no other than highly recommend. The sound of one hand clapping? Vacuous statements on my part? Others can be the judge. I suspect that many hardly care, in fact, have any ability to care, but hey! How much more arrogant can I be with a statement like that. It should/could be very rewarding in allowing some of the citizens in this continental landmass that is the nation of Australia to maybe have more understanding of the plight of the refugee as to reasons to leave the brutality of a past life and with that how they deal with that past, this present and their future. With that mea culpa on my inability to write deeper thoughts, I can communicate to anyone that peruses my occasional scribblings that I have found this is an exceptional read indeed. Read up on what that question means and read the premise of the book as I am not that capable of explaining in a particularly articulate manner. The title is a Zen koan philosophical question based on what………? It is over a week since I have finished and I am still thinking about this at times very sad tale and the title that goes with it. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the barbarism of an old world left behind, about the harshness of a new country, and the destiny of those in a land beyond hope who seek to redeem themselves through love. As the shadows of the past begin to intrude ever more forcefully into the present, Sonja's empty life and her father's living death are to change forever. Thirty-five years later, Sonja returns to Tasmania and a father haunted by memories of the European war and other, more recent horrors. One night, Bojan's wife walked off into a blizzard, never to return - leaving Bojan to drink too much to quiet his ghosts, and to care for his three-year-old daughter Sonja alone. It was 1954, in a construction camp for a hydroelectric dam in the remote Tasmanian highlands, where Bojan Buloh had brought his family to start a new life away from Slovenia, the privations of war, and refugee settlements. It is a virtuoso performance from an Australian who is emerging as one of our most talented new storytellers. A sweeping novel of world war, migration, and the search for new beginnings in a new land, The Sound of One Hand Clapping was both critically acclaimed and a best-seller in Australia.
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