Judith M. Heimann grew up in New York City, where her father and both his brothers were newspapermen. She lived in Borneo in the mid-1960s with her American diplomat husband John Heimann, and their school-age children. In Borneo, she made lifelong friends of Tom Harrisson, his then-wife Barbara, and indigenous people she later wrote about. After a career in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as a US diplomat alongside her husband, in retirement she became a nonfiction writer and went back to Borneo several times to research her books, help on tv documentaries, and celebrate anniversaries of important wartime dates there; she still remembers the names of the people, the songs, the carvings and paintings, and especially the way the local people met her and her family more than halfway.
I wrote
The Most Offending Soul Alive: Tom Harrisson and His Remarkable Life
Sir David Attenborough describes Tom Harrisson as a... “Explorer, museum curator, guerilla fighter, pioneer sociologist, documentary filmmaker, anthropologist--Tom Harrisson was…
The first half of this book is a fictionalized account of a true story of colonial women and children who had been en route under Japanese guard to a World War II prison camp in Malaya. When their Japanese guard died before they found the camp, the women and children were now without an escort, and were in effect prisoners of their own inability to manage by themselves in the jungles of inland Malaya. Under a competent, courageous young Englishwomen, they found shelter in a Malay village, where they had to learn to make themselves welcome guests to villagers who had barely enough to survive on without these additional mouths to feed. The tact and forbearance on both sides is what makes this a moving, hard to forget, story by one of Australia’s best-loved novelists.
'Probably more people have shed tears over the last page of A Town Like Alice than about any other novel in the English language... remarkable' Guardian
Jean Paget is just twenty years old and working in Malaya when the Japanese invasion begins.
When she is captured she joins a group of other European women and children whom the Japanese force to march for miles through the jungle - an experience that leads to the deaths of many.
Due to her courageous spirit and ability to speak Malay, Jean takes on the role of leader of the sorry gaggle of prisoners…
A charming memoir by the wife of a British colonial officer of living with her husband and child in what is now Sabah and part of Malaysia but was then (the 1930s) known as British North Borneo. Keith’s writing voice has a gentle tone that shows off her tact and wisdom in helping her family lead a happy life where there was plenty of household help but also unabating tropical heat and humidity and almost none of the amenities they would have had at Home in England.
This book was written during an era when Sabah was known as North Borneo, and when life was very much different from today s. Reprinted many times, this classic, of Agnes Keith s observations and reflections of the time, is a true-to-life record of society and culture then and of the captivating natural beauty of Sabah. Today, Sabah continues to be known as the land below the wind , a phrase used by seafarers in the past to describe all the lands south of the typhoon belt, but which Agnes effectively reserved for Sabah through her book. One of few…
Again, it’s Agnes Keith, but this time using her gentle voice to describe the trials that she, her husband, and their son and their neighbors and friends endured during their stays in Japanese World War II prison camps in tropical Borneo. One critic wonderingly comments about this book that it “records but never renders pain, observes human nature but never attacks any individual” and concludes “the author’s writing is restrained and touching.”
When the Japanese take Borneo in 1942, Agnes Keith is captured and imprisoned with her two-year-old son. Fed on minimal rations, forced to work through recurrent bouts of malaria and fighting with rats for scraps of food, Agnes Keith's spirit never completely dies. Keeping notes on scraps of paper which she hides in her son's home-made toys or buries in tins, she records a mother's pain at watching her child go hungry and her poignant pride in his development within these strange confines. She also describes her captors in all their complexity. Colonel Suga, the camp commander, is an intelligent,…
This book, by a well-born English friend of mine, was written when he was young and fancy free; he was then (in 1978) accurately described on the book jacket as a cheerful young man “who greets each new acquaintance and experience with enormous enthusiasm” as he makes his way alone, without fuss (while making local indigenous friends along the way) for five months through what was then one of the last remaining wild spots in the world.
Sir David Attenborough describes Tom Harrisson as a... “Explorer, museum curator, guerilla fighter, pioneer sociologist, documentary filmmaker, anthropologist--Tom Harrisson was all these things. He was also arrogant, choleric, swashbuckling, often drunk, and nearly always deliberately outrageous. In spite of these contradictions, he became a key figure in every enterprise he undertook. Judith Heimann describes how he did so. A brilliant and insightful biography.”
Seeking to do justice to Harrisson’s remarkable life, Heimann interviewed hundreds of Harrisson’s friends, colleagues, rivals, and enemies on four continents. Harrisson won the DSO for running the most successful guerilla war in Borneo against the Japanese with the help of ANZUS soldiers and blow-piping, headhunting Borneo tribespeople.
This book (and its sequels) are about overcoming the odds; about learning to improve the skills and abilities you have, rather than dwelling on what you can't do. Conflict, plague, and scheming politicians are all featured along the way–but none of the characters are human!
When a plague kills half the Drax population, and leaves the hatchlings of the survivors with a terrible deformity – no wings – suspicion and prejudice follow. Continuously harassed by raids from their traditional enemies, the Koth, the Drax are looking for someone, or something, to blame.
Zarda, an apprentice Fate-seer, is new to her role and unsure of her own abilities; but the death of her teacher sees her summoned by the Drax Prime, Kalis, when his heir, Dru, emerges from his shell without wings.
A vision that Dru will one day defeat the Koth is enough to keep…
