Le Forum

After two failed marriages, Nadine has sworn never to let another man dominate her life. But she meets Olivier, a French Australian who is griefstricken after the death of his wife of forty-seven years. Can their love survive five weeks in France and forty years of cultural and emotional baggage?

Award-winning journalist Nadine Williams has focused on social issues, women’s issues and gender relationships during her 19 years at Adelaide’s The Advertiser. A mother of three adult children, she has been studying French for six years at the Alliance Francaise d’Adelaide. 

On 16 August 1991, together with my husband Alain, I left the vineyard region of Nantes in France to settle in Tasmania. Aside from vague stories about devils, at the time, I knew very little about this mysterious island nestled in the Roaring Forties, to the south of the Australian continent, the last inhabited land before Antarctica. We arrived 18 August 1991, in the middle of winter. We settled in a small cottage, at the end of a deserted track, populated by spiders, scorpions and other autochthonous creatures. Thus began our initiation into local society which was soon followed by a series of adventures often funny and sometimes deeply moving and which, over the years, wou
Originally published in French for French readers, A Frog in the Billabong brings to Australian readers a delightfully candid perspective on Australian multiculturalism as well as a small piece of the history of the epicurean movement in Tasmania. A Frog in the Billabong is published by Littlefox Press; printed by Littlefox in Western Australia - inside pages are on 100% recycled non-bleached Australian recycled paper and binding is with non-toxic glue.

Ricky Fitzgerald was much too good-looking to have heard of a theory according to which you could be sitting at your uncle's cafe in Fremantle minding your own business and yet catch a head cold because somewhere in the Amazonian forest a butterfly fluttered its wing at the right time and in the wrong place, or vice versa. And so, Ricky Dreamed on, blissfully oblivious that several kilometers due east of his very own table and several hours earlier, strangely portentous and rather complicated events had taken place at O'Connor University. Events spurred by passion, envy and betrayal that were about to intrude into his life with the devastating force of an Act of God, and would so rattle his person as to make a man of him... 

Christine Mathieu is the author of broadly acclaimed literacy memoir Leaving Mother Lake (with Yang Erche Namu) and of a history of the Sino-Tibetan borderland. While in Spain at the turn of the Millennium, she began writing Goodbye from Vanilla in a fit of nostalgia for the old port of Fremantle where she lived in the 1980s.  

In a country where newborns are given away, abandoned, or even murdered because they are girls, there exists a culture in which women have all of the power. In the foothills of the Chinese Himalayas rests a society like no other: Moso Country or, as the Chinese call it, "the Country of Daughters." Here women do not marry but openly choose a line of village men to father their children. In Moso Country there is no word for father, and property is passed down from mother to daughter. Marriage is considered backward. Sons spend the entirety of their lives helping to run their mothers' households, and daughters learn to become leaders and survivors. In this unique matrilineal society, on the shores of Lake Lugu in Yunan Province, China, is where Yang Erche Namu was born and raised.

Namu was known in her village as the little one whose mother tried to give her away three times because she would not stop crying. Though the Moso people embrace ideals of family harmony and sexual freedom, even in the land of women, tensions between mothers and daughters run high. The headstrong Namu had dreams for a future that reached far beyond Lake Lugu and her peasant family's poverty. Thus, when Chinese cultural officials came looking for talented singers, she seized her chance and broke one taboo that binds the Moso people-she left her mother's house to make her way to the world beyond the mountains.

A lyrical evocation of girlhood in a remote land where women truly rule, LEAVING MOTHER LAKE is as much a universal tale of mothers and daughters-the battles that drive them and the love that brings them back together-as it is an in-depth look at the norms and mores of a culture that would be unheard-of in the Western world.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Yang Erche Namu, a talented singer, is widely known for her outrageous exploits, pop stardom, love affairs, outlandish fashion, and work on behalf of the Moso. She has lived all over the world and currently calls Beijing her home.

Christine Mathieu did her doctoral study in Moso culture and history. She divides her time between San Francisco and Fremantle in Western Australia.

Fast Easy Way to Learn a Language will have you speaking your new language in no time. The book explores all the important topics: active and passive learning (widely promoted in ASSIMIL language packs), mastering a different alphabet, using recorded material, planning your own immersion program, making effective use of the internet and much more. It includes special advice for school and university students. This is the fun way to learn a language.

Bill Handley is the author of the best-selling books Teach Your Children Tables, Speed Mathematics and Speed Maths For Kids. Based in Melbourne, Australia, he is recognised internationally as an authority on teaching and study methods. He lectures regularly to educators and teachers, and his methods have achieved astonishing results in schools worldwide.

At a time in her life when friends were retiring and spending time with their grandchildren, a night out in Paris while she visited her musician son inspired Elaine Lewis to dream of a daring venture in this most enchanting of cities. Her vision was more than just fanciful. After doing the necessary research and groundwork, Elaine packed her bags and left Australia to open, on the Left Bank, the first Australian bookshop in central Paris.
Full of incredible energy and enthusiasm, and with the help of locals and visiting Australians, she created her shop in the heart of the St-Germain-des-Pr‚s literary quarter. Situated just around the corner from Notre Dame, her cosy literary haven quickly became an important cultural centre and a home away from home for Australian writers and artists in Paris. Writers who were visitors at the bookshop included David Malouf, Helen Garner, Nikki Gemmell and Nick Earls. Elaine hosted events, book readings and encouraged an exchange of ideas and a love of literature, as well as midnight swims in the Seine!

Trapped in the austerity of post-war London, 20-year-old Valerie Barnes yearned for the good times promised by the wartime songs. Then two chance meetings catapulted her into a high-flying career at the newly-formed United Nations in Geneva and the arms of a glamorous Frenchman...

Joining an elite breed of independent women who travelled the world in the 1950's and 1960's, Valerie lived a jet-setting life as an interpreter, working in exotic locales and rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and presidents. At the same time she was juggling a Swiss chalet home, three children and a love rat of a husband nack in Geneva. But whatever Valerie did, she threw herself into it with zest. From dancing flamenco to being kidnapped in Cairo, being wooed by an African president or falling for a passionat Pole, Valerie's gift for storytelling makes A Foreign Affair a lively, funny, utterly delightful memoir.