The new novel by Alison Booth, ANU academic and author, will be launched at the National Library of Australia Bookshop. Entitled A Distant Land (youtube) Booth’s new novel is set in 1971, towards the end of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. This conflict - the last and most prolonged proxy battle of the Cold War - saw Australians become increasingly divided. Should the country be at war at all, or had it been manipulated into involvement by its political leaders? Did people have the right to take to the streets and protest about the conflict? And just how far was the security intelligence organization prepared to go to silence the protesters? Against this background, A Distant Land explores the lives of three characters who grew up in the coastal town of Jingera, a place they still view as home. Jim Cadwallader is now a respected war correspondent in Indochina, reporting on the Vietnam War as it spills over into Cambodia. He has plans to return to Australia for good as he has something important to tell Zidra Vincent. Meanwhile Zidra, an ambitious journalist at the Sydney Morning Chronicle, is reporting on the moratorium marches. A news story comes her way, involving the security intelligence organization and threatening the wellbeing of Aboriginal woman Lorna Hunter. As Zidra is about to embark on a scoop that she hopes will make her career, she see in the newsroom one day a wire services bulletin. A story out of Cambodia. And her world begins to unravel around her.

This is a free event. The NLA Bookshop telephone number is (02) 6262 1424.