Brook's Books

Jo Maree Coghlan, University of Wollongong, NSW (email)

I am a lecturer and postgrad at the University of Wollongong. I am currently finishing a PhD on Megawati and was interested in your book. It seems to have been written with a lot of first hand knowledge and I was wondering how you would feel about a) a formal interview for my research that might include publication in either the thesis or any book I can get out of it, of b) a chat with a Bali/Indo addict.

I am particularaly interested in the way that you/we see/saw Megawati as a social democrat, how she was represented in the western media and how Indonesians understood her, whether as a Sukarno or as a nationalist? Much of my work has been about understanding Mega in relation to her father...In relation to the western media, I have done a two year study of the Australian, British and American press to argue that they legitimised Mega as a pro-capital democrat and accepted her nationalism as an anti-balkanisation position that was good for foreign (US) capital.

...Should you feel this all a bit much, thanks for the book, it made me laugh out loud, and nothing since Douglas Adams has made me do that.

8 August 2005