Resistance: A Childhood Fighting for East Timor (Naldo Rei, UQP, $34.95 tpb, ISBN 9780702236327, November) ****

Naldo Rei was just six-months-old when Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975. One of 10 children, Rei spent the first three years of his life in the jungle, where his family had fled for safety. After his father was murdered for his work in the resistance movement, nine-year-old Rei was recruited by the clandestine Fretilin network and began his extraordinary journey fighting for East Timor’s freedom. Throughout his teenage years, Rei was imprisoned and tortured regularly for his covert resistance to the brutal Indonesian regime. Eventually, in too much danger to
remain in his homeland, he escaped to Indonesia before coming to Australia where he studied and continued to
agitate for East Timor’s freedom. Not only a powerful memoir, Rei’s book is the story of a new nation’s struggle for independence. Including maps, timelines and a useful structure of the resistance movement this is an invaluable resource for libraries and readers of contemporary politics. Rei combines his experience as a journalist and media advisor with a natural storytelling ability to produce a powerful political and spiritual autobiography. Tais is the traditional East Timorese cloth that symbolises friendship and love and in a way Naldo Rei’s book celebrates the ability of friendship and love to enact change at a powerful level.

Fiona Stager is the co-owner of Avid Reader Bookshop & Café, West End, Brisbane

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker