[TimorLesteStudies] New Edition of East Timor: A Bitter Dawn by Irena Cristalis now available

[Bu Wilson]

http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=4238 

East Timor
A Nation's Bitter Dawn (New Edition)

Irena Cristalis
	Hardback: £60.00 	ISBN: 9781848130128
 	Paperback: £18.99 	ISBN: 9781848130135

Publication date: 23/04/2009
Features:
Format: 234mm x 153mm

About the Book

Few new nations have endured a birth as traumatic as that endured by Asia's
youngest country, East Timor. Emerging from the flames, pillage and mayhem
that surrounded Indonesia 's reluctant withdrawal in 1999, it has been
struggling for years to rebuild itself from the ashes. The author is one of
a handful of journalists who refused to be evacuated during the nightmarish
Indonesian withdrawal, and who has stayed on to report East Timor to the
world, and to keep faith with the East Timorese whose story she wanted to
tell.

Her book is a vivid first-hand account of the lives of individual Timorese
during the long decades of Indonesia 's repressive occupation, their often
heroic struggle for freedom, and their efforts to cope with the dramatic
historic shifts engulfing them and their endeavours to rebuild their
homeland.

Based on years of research, and lengthy interviews with East Timor 's
leaders, priests, nuns, students and guerrilla fighters, this moving and
extremely readable book is at the same time also an exploration of the
complexities of the country's internal politics.
About the Author

Irena Cristalis, who also writes and broadcasts under the byline, Irene
Slegt, is a Dutch journalist and photographer, who since 1990 has been based
in Asia, including at various times Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, New Delhi
and East Timor.

She understands three Asian languages -- Chinese, Indonesian and Tetum, the
indigenous language of the East Timorese.

She has reported on the wars, conflicts and independence struggles from
Kashmir in the north west of Asia to East Timor in the south-eastern corner.
Her photos and reports in China, Mongolia, Kashmir, Nepal, Burma, Cambodia,
Laos, Tibet, Indonesia and many other Asian countries have been used by
newspapers, magazines and radio stations around the world, including the
Guardian, the Independent, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Der Spiegel, the
New York Times, The Economist, the BBC, Radio Netherlands and Deutsche
Welle. Her second book on East Timor: Independent Women, The story of
women's activism in East Timor, co-written with Catherine Scott, was
published in 2004.

Her connection with East Timor goes back to 1994. She lived there from 1998
till 2000 and spent time with Falintil in the mountains; she was also one of
the three Western journalists to stay on in the besieged UN compound and
keep on reporting during the ransacking of Dili by paramilitary and the
Indonesian security forces at the time of their impending departure from the
island in September 1999. She has kept going back to East Timor at every
important juncture in its recent history as an independent state, including
the crisis in 2006 and the first parliamentary elections in 2007.

Since 2007 she has been living in London with her husband and small son.



Bu Wilson
Regulatory  Institutions Network (RegNet) Research School of Pacific and
Asian Studies
College of Asia and the Pacific,
Australian National University 
Canberra   ACT   0200 
AUSTRALIA 

T: 02 6125 3194
F: 02 6125 1507
M: 0407 087 086
E: Bu.Wilson at anu.edu.au



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