AustLit

'Forty-eight years ago, a young and apprehensive Tony Kevin set off on his first diplomatic posting to Moscow at the height of the Cold War. In the Russian winter of 2016 he returns alone, a private citizen aged 73. What will he find? How has Russia changed since those grim Soviet days?

'Tony Kevin had a successful and challenging diplomatic career, ending with ambassadorships to Poland (1991-94) and Cambodia (1994-97). He now applies his attention to Vladimir Putin's Russia, a government and nation routinely demonised and disdained in Western capitals. Why does President Putin arouse such a high level of Western antagonism? Is the West throwing away the lessons of recent history in recklessly drifting into a perilous and unnecessary new Cold War confrontation against Russia?

'Tony Kevin invites readers to see this great nation anew: to explore with him the complex roots of Russian national identity and values, drawing on its traumatic recent sevety-year Soviet Communist past and its momentous thousand-year history as a great Orthodox Christian nation that has both loved and feared 'the West,' and which the West has loved and feared back in equal measure.' (Publication summary)

Tony Kevin believes it is wrong to dismantle the current Australian Government's restrictions on the parallel importation of books into Australia. He argues that in an internationally unprotected Australian book industry, Australian authors would find it hard to 'break through the Anglo-American publishing world's general distainful view that little new writing of value could come out of Australia...'

'In May 2006, armed only with a small rucksack and a staff, Tony Kevin, an overweight, sedentary, 63-year-old former diplomat, set off on an eight-week trek across Spain. But this was not just a very long walk - it was a pilgrimage.

'From Granada, in the southeast, to Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest, Tony followed the Via Mozarabe and the Via de la Plata, two of the many pilgrim trails that crisscross Spain and Portugal and that all lead to a single destination. In the Middle Ages, the cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela was Europe's most famous centre of pilgrimage, and in recent years it has enjoyed a remarkable revival; every day towards noon, hundreds of hot, tired, and dusty pilgrims stream into Santiago Cathedral for the daily Pilgrim's Mass.

'What, in our busy, materialistic 21st century, is this apparently anachronistic phenomenon all about? What drives tens of thousands of people of all nationalities and creeds to make long, exhausting walks across the cold mountains and hot tablelands of Spain, to take part finally in a mediaeval Christian liturgy of spiritual renewal and reconciliation with God?

'Walking the Camino beautifully captures the flavour of what it was like to walk the camino, and is filled with fascinating observations and anecdotes about the nature of contemporary Spain. And, unavoidably, because pilgrimage is such a deeply personal experience that has the potential to unlock the deepest recesses of hidden memory and conscience, it is also a profound personal meditation on the nature of modern life.' (Publisher's blurb)