Atlas of Cursed Places
A travel guide to dangerous and frightful destinations
Author: Oliver Le Carrer
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
Type: Hard Cover
Pages: 142
Genre: non-fiction (mostly, see below)
Published: 2015
ISBN: 9781631910005
The book itself is really nice looking, its hardcover and is well made. It has many beautiful maps, but no drawings or sketches of the buildings described sadly.
The introduction is a little off putting and i started to worry what i am in for with this one. It kind of implied that the biblical genesis is actual history. And insinuates that billion people (that's almost everyone on earth) is judo-christian. It also strangely tries to separate the paranormal and supernatural from religion, which is really weird, whats more supernatural than magic and the Gods?
But please do plow through this, the book isn't really trying to indoctrinate the innocent reader into any one religion, as later on it gives other Gods almost as much historical reality. It seems the meaning can sometimes be muddied by flowery prose.
The book does use the antiquated BC/AD which doesn't add to its credibility, but is a common enough mistake to not effect the score too much.
The book looks at some interesting places like, islands, castles, villages, forests, tombs, cemeteries, marshlands, and delves into some haunted locations and the homes of some cryptids. Each entry has a few pages of information and at least one map of where the subject is located.
Some of the most interesting places for me were, the Pine Barrens, Amityville, The Suicide Forrest, The Bermuda Triangle, and Eilean Mor Lighthouse.
As an example the book looks at Nuremburg and tells how a former SS Nazi barracks has become home to the High Commission for Refugees there.
But on page 92 i read something incredibly distressing. The location is Nauru, and the last paragraph notes that it-
"leased part of its modest surface area to Australia as a reception center for illegal immigrants."
I was shocked, i read those words again and again as tears came to my eyes.
Because i know that the reception refuges face on Nauru is not a nice one. Any person that arrives in Australia by boat is captured, and relocated to one of Australians off shore prison camps like Nauru. These poor men, women and children are not processed, our far right wing government (and center right opposition) have refused to ever allow any of them to resettle in Australia. These prison camps are designed as a punishment for trying to seek asylum in Australian, and as a deterrent from other refuges from attempting to do the same.
Remember that these are not illegal immigrants, these are refugees seeking asylum in Australia, fleeing war, famine and terrorism.
In these prison camps on Nauru and Manus islands, refuges face isolation, torture, lack of medical care, hopelessness, rape, assault, murder, and child abuse. As a result of the horrors they have fled and those inflicted upon them by indefinite incarceration without crime, charge or trial some of these poor people have self harmed and even committed suicide in order to free themselves from the unending horror.
Please don't take my word for it, follow the links. Another disturbing aspect of this is that the ministers responsible for this horror are often promoted, and given even more power.
While contacting the Coalition and Labor governments might help the only real solution is to vote Green in Australia as they are the only party (of reasonable size) that have an even remotely humane refugee policy.
Okay, so in light of this horrific lack of research on the author, fact checker, and editors part it may surprise you to know that i do actually recommend this book. It is a nice looking book and is an interesting read. But the Nauru part is a great example of the need to check your sources, and to get your information from more than one source. It would be a good way to teach children the importance of this ability and it seems the ability to discern fact from lie (alternate fact) is more and more necessary as we know that the fascism of the Right gains power through ignorance.
Please seek help if you need to talk about the horrors that refugees are facing at the hands of the Australian government.
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