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John, a fifth
generation Tasmanian, spent his professional life as an academic
outside Tasmania, his last appointment being at the University
of Hong Kong. Westerners were thought to be so enervated by
the heat and humidity of Hong Kong that by the age of sixty
they would fall like autumn leaves to their roots. This leaf
fell to his roots in Tasmania, delighted at the opportunity
of achieving a long held but frustrated desire: instead of
writing about teaching and student learning, he would now
write about misunderstood love.
Hong Kong had involved
his heart as well as his head; it was there that he met his
partner, Catherine. Thus inspired, many of his short stories
and novels are what he calls 'Sino-Australian fusion'. The
Girl in the Golden House is a story of sexual awakening, narrated
in the first person by Chris Wong; Project Integrens is a
sci-fi about the evolution of the human brain that takes misunderstanding
to another galaxy; in Disguises, an Australian-born Chinese
girl feels she's forced to wear a Chinese disguise - not funny,
in Hanson's Australia. In Tin Dragons, love is finally understood
in the wilds of nineteenth century Tasmania.
More at www.johnbiggs.com.au
Published
by Maygog
Tin Dragons
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