Shooting Balibo

Blood and Memory in East Timor

By: Tony Maniaty

Narrated by: Humphrey Bower

When foreign correspondent Tony Maniaty goes back to Timor for the first time since he fled for his life thirty years before, he discovers a land of ghosts - some he left behind, and some he's brought with him. He's there to watch five young actors play out the last days of five friends of his - men who were murdered by the Indonesian army in one of the most infamous incidents (and cover-ups) in Australian foreign affairs. He's also there to talk to some friends who survived - Gusmao, Ramos-Horta - people he knew as guerrillas and who now run the country. When he arrives, past and present, fiction and fact begin to overlap: at the Hotel Turismo he's assigned room eleven - the room he had in 1975. And, he later discovers, the room the actor playing his young self had been staying in. Old contacts appear out of the jungle, and disappear into rooms of state. But the most harrowing overlap is when he watches five young men being taken into a shack on the outskirts of Balibo, towards death.©2009 Tony Maniaty. (P)2009 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

"A brave and complex achievement. Racy and wryly reflective, one man's very moving version of history." (David Malouf, novelist and poet)

"An exquisitely drawn memoir of a time of tragic innocence." (Paul Ham)

"A real coup. Maniaty shows how youthful bravado is fated to smash headlong into the anguish of the world." (Helen Garner, award-winning author of The Spare Room)

"Journalism as adventure: the competitiveness, the risks, the recklessness and the stakes. Bold and revealing." (Mary Kostakidis)

Boring... Boring

It is a very boring book, badly sequenced,
I could not listen more than half before throwing it out .. Sorry for being so frank

Interesting subject

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would recommend if they didn't know anything about the subject

Any additional comments?

Not that bad...deserves more than one star.