Birds of Passage [first edition]

'A lyric celebration of the physical and spiritual endurance of two Chinese men who quest for wholeness of soul...The settings are brilliantly evoked.' Sydney Morning Herald 'His writing is as spare and controlled, yet as eloquent, as flowing and compelling as the finest Oriental painting.' The Australian Birds of Passage is the vividly told, intense story of Seamus O'Young, an Australian-born Chinese who is on a collision course with his past. Shan is an ancestor of Seamus, one of many Chinese who came to Australia in the 1850s only to be driven from the goldfields by depravity, racism and greed. It is through the eyes of Shan that Seamus comes to understand the fight he is making for his own life and sanity in a society yet to come to terms with its own unease about difference and diversity.