Book description
In the last years of the twentieth century, Richard Lloyd Parry found
himself in the vast island nation of Indonesia, one of the most
alluring, mysterious and violent countries in the world. For
thirty-two years it had been paralysed by the grip of the dictator and
mystic General Suharto. But now the age of Suharto was reaching its
end, giving way to a new era of chaos and superstition - the 'time of
madness' predicted centuries before by poets and seers.
On the island of Borneo, tribesmen embarked on a savage war of
head-hunting and cannibalism. Vast jungles burned uncontrollably;
money lost its value; there were plane crashes and volcanic eruptions.
After the tumultuous fall of Suharto came the vote of independence
from Indonesia for the tiny occupied country of East Timor. And it was
here, trapped in the besieged compound of the United Nations, that
Lloyd Parry reached his own painful, personal crisis.
Richard Lloyd Parry
is Asia editor of
The Times
, based in Tokyo. He is the author of
People Who Eat Darkness,
a journey into the shadows of Japan following the tragic case of Lucie
Blackman.
