AustLit

'He is an Australian businessman with a secret hope that Australia as a nation will count for something important in its region and the world. She is the daughter of an Indonesian mystic whose secret hope is that she will become the country's president. Each year she spends a night with her father in the graves of their ancestors. "Otherwise," she laughs, "I'm just a regular Sydney girl," or, as she sometimes says, "a ratbag feminist." She is against abortion and wants marriage and children. He believes that free love, like free markets, will find its own way. As a compromise, they marry in a secular ceremony in Prague and become crusaders for a liberal, democratic new world order. But Indonesian and Australian politics - and the Goddess of the Arafura Sea - conspire against them. ' (Publication summary)