THERE is much to commend in Agnes S. K. Yeow's recent book, Conrad's Eastern Vision: A Vain and Floating Appearance. It is thoroughly researched, lucidly written and completely focused on its subject: the stories and novel Joseph Conrad wrote where the Malay Archipelago is the setting. Making good use of recent Conrad criticism, poststructuralist approaches to texts, and her knowledge of the history and geography of the region, Yeow has provided us with fully contextualized, readable, fascinating and nuanced readings of works such as An Outcast of the Islands, Almayer's Folly, and of course, Lord Jim. In the process, she manages to convince us not only of the “romance” that drew him to fictionalize the region he had experienced on his own but of the way he problematized it in his narratives. Additionally, she tries to persuade us that “in the trajectory of Conrad's aesthetic development, there is clearly a 'Malayan' phase” in which he negotiated between art and history.

POLITICS without repartee and politicians without wit can often turn out to be an abrasive concoction. And it is especially in these present, some would say mediocre, times that a sense of humour in politicians remains acute by its conspicuous absence. We are rather unfortunate that ours happens to be an age when, for much of the time, we laugh at politicians rather than laugh with them. That is the pity, given that there used to be a time when men like Piloo Mody, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Syed Badrudduja, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan injected good doses of humour into their politics and left people feeling pretty light-hearted, even jocular, about conditions that were otherwise quite weighty.

ERICH Segal's Oliver's Story is a popular romantic book from one who was born 1937 in New York as the son of a rabbi. He is a graduate of Harvard and wrote texts for musicals. Today he lives in New Haven and is a professor for literature in New York