Sojourners: Flowers and the Wide Sea: The Epic Story of China's Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia by Eric Rolls

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges, particularly to front cover right corners, now protected with book tape. Mark on tail foredge. Cracking to spine with reinforcing to pages 326-327. Still a readable copy.

Bristling with character and drama, lively incidents and the clash of civilisations, Sojourners is the story of China's centuries-old relationship with Australia. The result of twenty-five years of research, Eric Rolls magnificently written book is an epic in the tradition of The Fatal Shore.

As well as the high drama of history, Sojourners covers the important themes of gambling, a passion that the Chinese shared with European Australians, and health and sickness, particularly opium smoking and the strange story of leprosy and smallpox. The great fear of these diseases enabled governments to use them as political tools.