Marcus Clarke Books

I don't think anybody really supported the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan in 1979-1980. Most Westerners thought the Soviet action was barbaric. Tamarov in his picture book makes us aware of the human side with the Russian soldiers. Most were following their duty and doing their "international duty". Many were killed in the low grade guerilla war that followed the invasion. Tarmarov was a mine sweeper, and he was constantly exposed to danger. Several of his friends paid the price of their occupation. One wonders about the similarities with American verterans of the Vietnam War. In fact, Tamarov meets some of these verterans at the end of the book, and they have a lot in common.

There is some writing in this large picture book. The writing did not flow smoothly, but the pictures were great. They show the guerrilla war in Afghanistan from the Russian perspective.

Here is a riveting memoir by Vladislav Tamarov. In 1984 men were drafted into the Soviet Army at the age of eighteen. There was no choice. Unless you were in college or disabled, you served. Many men broke their legs to avoid serving. Others, the more wealthy, bribed their way out. Vlad was in college two years when the law changed and he was off to boot camp. Training the men needed, they never received. Training the men did NOT need, they got. (For example, lots of time was spent learning to parachute, even though it was a well known fact that no one used parachutes in Afghanistan.)

Vlad was born January 12, 1965. His "Date of Military Service Application" was April 26, 1984. This memoir really began when an officer walked up to Vlad at a distribution center and asked, "Do you want to serve in the commandos, the Blue Berets?" Vlad kept a tiny calendar where he crossed off his six hundred and twenty-one days, one-at-a-time. Vlad kept detailed records of each mission he participated in. He had his own little code, shown in this memoir. Two hundred and seventeen of those days were spent on combat missions. In addition to Vlad's coded diary, he secretly took many photographs. This book has dozens of the pictures littered throughout, and makes a powerful impact on those who read it.

***** Vlad, a minesweeper, portrays the horrors of war in vivid details. The reader can almost hear the explosions nearby and smell the fear of being shot at. Once you have read THIS book, you will never forget it! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch.

An excellent book! Lots of powerful pictures. Purchased the book from Amazon while serving in Afghanistan. Lots of flash backs/forwards in the story line, which I could have done without. But all together it's a well written, interesting book, which depicts a Soviet Solders tour of duty in Afghanistan.

This is the most amazing book I have read all year! It's not just a story, in his own words, from a young Russian soldier in that terrible place, but it is a photo book full of the most beautiful but tragic black and white photos. You see the haunted faces of Vladimir Tamarov (the author and photographer) and his brother soldiers, many of which did not make it back. And as you read his haunted words, how he came back and could not ever be the same, how his friends who died there visit him in his dreams. They were eighteen and nineteen but they look sixteen. The title "Soviet Vietnam" is quite haunting. I believe if I met the author now I would be reminded of our own boys who were damaged by Vietnam. They also were just draftees (conscripts) in a place where they did not want to be. As for our soldiers who are now in Afghanistan, it's true they are fighting the same vicious enemy as Vladimir did! But, don't our men look ever so much better fed, and organized, and equipped, and trained, then those poor Soviet conscripts? I reccommend this book so highly, I would personally buy a copy for all my friends.

As a paratrooper currently serving my second tour in Afghanistan (and third in the desert overall), I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Soviet conflict of the 1980s. The photographs provide insight into Afghanistan's terrain and climate, and I used this book to illustrate several points to my subordinates as we were preparing for this deployment. The author's writing is heartfelt.

The well-known phrase 'for the term of his natural life' is used by Marcus Clarke to bring home the horrors of transportation and the Tasmanian penal system in the 19th century.
Richard Devine, an innocent man (under an assumed name of Rufus Dawes) convicted of a crime he did not commit, is sent for transportation and assumed killed in a shipwreck. In reality, he is heir to a vast estate (unbeknown to him) and the convolutions of the tale that evolve from this are wonderfully written; the gradual demolishing of Dawes, the unspeakable duality of Frere, the calculating guile of Sarah and the gullible innocence of Sylvia are woven together in a plot that does not end happily ever after. This I think, serves to underline the barbarism and futility of the transportation system.
Based on actual events, Clarke uses his 'hero' to illustrate the depravation and privations that prisoners (and their guards) had to endure. Graphically showing how degradation degrades and power corrupts, the narrative never dwells on gruesome details, instead it relies for effect on the imagination of the reader, which can be more terrifying.
A book that deserves a wider readership.

This was without question one of the most gripping novels I've read in many a day. I first ran across this work in a brief mention by British travel writer/popular historian James Morris, where he thought it akin to the gulag novels of post-Stalinist Russia in subject matter and philosophical content. Add to that a wealth of striking narrative detail, immensely memorable characters (Maurice Frere, Sarah Purfoy, and particularly James North leap to mind), some truly transporting (no pun intended) and incredibly creepy passages, mind-blowing plot twists and turns, and a persistent refusal to provide too pat solutions to characters' problems... Clarke wasn't better than Dickens or Eliot, but neither of the latter could have written this book.

Clarke's masterpiece was published in 1874, after being serialized in 1870-72. Critics have lambasted a few of the less believable elements and some of the pat characterization of a number of supporting characters, but these are flaws to be found in most novels of that time (and ours). Clarke redeems himself by taking the cliches and mannerisms of the nineteenth-century English novel and using them to illuminate a whole new society, one practically mythical to the metropolitan consciousness of the Victorian Anglophone world. This work is a great counterpoint to all those English novels of the day where the hero or villain gets packed off to the antipodes and returns mysteriously changed. The main thrust of the novel, though, was the need to tell the true story of (white) Australian society's beginnings. Clarke, in telling the story of the unjustly convicted Rufus Dawes (aka Richard Devine), provides a panoramic view of early Victorian Australia, from the hellish convict settlements of Macquarie Harbor and Norfolk Island to the nascent frontier towns of Hobart and Melbourne, from the aging memories of the "First Fleeters" (the original convicts who arrived in 1788) to the controversial Eureka Stockade Uprising of 1854. The narrative frequently moves at a deliciously whirlwind pace to accomodate the exciting interaction of characters and history.

Clarke's novel is generally cited as nineteenth-century Australia's greatest and points the way towards more nuanced examinations of the colonial experience in the twentieth century (Peter Carey's JOE MAGGS, about the "off-stage" life of Dickens antihero Abel Magwitch, is apparently very much in this vein). Don't read it just for this reason, though. Please be sure to find the longer, original version, as I was fortunate enough to do. Clarke was forced to produce a revised, shortened version for the original publication, one dictated by his editors that turned the novel into a much more "conventional" Victorian literary production (and has a longer title--FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE). I understand a TV series was made in the mid-80s with Anthony Perkins as North. If this was the case, then it badly needs to be remade on celluloid, because I can't seem to find the series. It's a magnificent novel whose flaws, I think, are amply counterbalanced by its unexpected joys.

It's a collation of events by various persons involved in the penal settlement of early Australia. Marcus Clarke has interwoven these events into a novel of fiction. These are stark facts; and show, as far as I've researched, very detailed. L.P. Hartely said it all,in this case.."The past is a foreign country.They do things differently there." The more you read on, the more you want to know..

LEt me set the record straight first...I have never read this book. I had seen the mini-series almost 10 years ago on CBC Canada. The series was very gripping and always left me waiting for the next in the sequence. Following the end of the series I was determined that I had to read this book. My last attempt to find it was in 1991 when I was told it was out of print and could not be found anywhere. Luckily I have just tripped across the information again and it prompted me to start looking again. Needless to say (but I must) I am thrilled to find it and now be able to finally read it. I hope it is everything that I know it is and more. It is an epic tale of grand proportions. Now if I can only find the video series AND a hard cover copy to add to my library!

Well, as an Australian living in the year 2000, reading this book, written in the 1880s, is an emotional experience.

For it is through works such as this that we can see our past. We can examine the nature of the beast that gave birth to us. Who we are. From whence we came.

If you want to understand why Australians are they way they are, and have the attitudes and language that they do, then give this book a read.

The title says it all. Dr. Thompson outlines the test used to DX the inflamatory and non-inflamatory forms of arthritis, signs and symptoms as well as drug therapies, PT and possible surgical procedures that can help patients be as informed as possible. The book is very readable with great laymen explanations and case studies that a patient can identify with.

This book is a novel that reads like history. It offers interesting insights of the history of Tasmania. This book is an Australian classic. Highly recommended.

For the term of his Natural Life is an Australian classic, a tale of inhumanity and suffering during Australia's early colonial history.

The more I read this, the more I see in it the emerging attitudes that play a very large part of Australian culture today. To start with, there is no significant reference to the Aboriginal people, the actual owners of the land, they seem to barely exist at all and when they do they are dismissed.

The characteristic disrespect for authority is here of course, for there's no attempt to soften the truth of the degradation and cruelty, it's a living, breathing image of the times. It broke my heart as a teenager for the prisons that Clarke describes in Tasmania and Norfolk Island are the prisons where my 12 year old great grandfather was cruelly tormented.

But Clarke doesn't attempt to persuade us with pity. Nor are we persuaded to to censure. Clarke merely portrays the atmosphere and attitudes of the period.

Please don't confuse the book with the fim starring Anthony Perkins. The only similarity is the title.

In the film, the working class Rufus Dawes becomes young aristocrat Richard Devine. The plot dives to the depths as the dashing young gentleman Devine is wrongly accused of murder and shipped off to the penal colony to suffer under the harsh prison conditions where he resolves to escape and restore his good name. Only the help of Sylvia, the prison Commandant's daughter, can save him. A nice, trite sample of maudlin mush.

Marcus Clarke would be spinning in his grave if he knew of this travesty

Clark's writings in this book give you an insight into penal life in Australia's early history. His writing style gives you an empathy with the characters,and his descriptons of the Port Arthur site make you feel as if you are there. Some time later I visited Port Arthur, and Clark's writings came back. When you have been there you realise how good the book is.

I am planning a trip to Tasmania and it was recommended that I read Clarke's epic tale. It is one of inspiration and great character and describes life, the conditions and environment in which those men and women suffered. I am particularly looking forward to visiting Sarah Island and Port Arthur so I can get a taste of what those people (both innocent and guilty) had to endure. Definately recommended reading for those planning a holiday to Tassie!

I read this book while in and returning from Tasmania. I found it to be a much better insight into the history and mentality of Australia than any tour/travel planner I read. It has survived the test of time because it is so accurate in its portrayal of the penal transportation system. It also serves to show that the recent tragedy at Port Arthur Tasmania is minor and almost insignificant if it is compared to what the "civilized" british empire performed at the same location

For a man whose name conjurs so much, there is distressingly little written about Marcus Junius Brutus. His famous assassination of Caeser dramatically altered history. This slim volume, which I devoured in one sitting, examines not only Brutus' life, but how his reputation has changed through the ages. I found myself busily underlining many passages and have returned to it on more than one ocassion. Clarke writes clearly and forcefully -- and he loves the Republic. The books lacks a bibliography and the index is rather concise.

Having said that I would highly recommend this to any student of the period. Indeed, I wish that the general public might have a better understanding of Brutus. As Cicero remarked of him, "I have always loved Marcus Brutus for his fine intellect, the charm of his manners, and his outstanding uprightness and reliability." He had tremendous character, "Virtus". Clarke writes, "For Brutus, freedom meant having no one as master; specifically it meant open government, senatorial debates and annual magistracies, the old institutions of Rome which insured that no one should have too much power."

Would that we all knew more of such men. Had he been a better general or more politically shrewd (and here I betray my own republican leanings), history might have been written quite differently, for I am not altogether sure that I subscribe to Sir Ronald Syme's brilliantly articulated thesis that the "empire" demanded (required?) a Principate and ultimately a monarchy (and I trust that in making this comment, I do justice to Syme's epochal work of genius, The Roman Revolution; likely not!). In this regard, I might also refer readers to Eric Gruen's study, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic.

Minucius Felix's Octavius is an artful early Christian work that reminds us of the golden dialogues of Cicero. In the Octavius, there are three participants: Caecilius, a pagan sophist; and Octavius and Minucius, who are both Christians. As the dialogue commences, Minucius is set to be the interlocutor, while Caecilius and Octavius engage in a religious debate. So in a long diatribe Caecilius takes the offensive, advocating philosophy and traditional Roman virtues over Christianity, which he believes is nothing more than a secretive religion of rustics and criminals. Octavius, in turn, responds at length to Caecilius in a favorable manner and wins him over to the Christian cause. All in all this is fine, except that Minucius never mediates between the two. Minucius is not an Academic [skeptic] but instead an assenting Christian dogmatist who is never actively manipulating dialogue. He raises no suggestions and no questions; but this is evidently because he is left awestruck and bemused by the depth and beauty Octavius' arguements (see, ch. 39). Although this negates his role as interlocutor and ultimately damages the dignity of the dialogue. Minucius is found only at the beginning and the end of the Octavius and takes a positive attitude toward one side. It certainly would have been nice to have seen him arbitrating between the two. Overall, as a dialogue, the Octavius is far to simple; but it is adorned with the graces of Ciceronian elegance and style and this is a big plus, especially considering the era in which it was composed. Because of its charm, the Octavius is one of the easier pieces of patristic literature to digest. Despite its faults, which are forgivable, the Octavius is a definite recommendation.