DATSUN ANGEL
Anna Broinowski, Hachette, $34.99
Broinowski’s The Director is the Commander, a Country Style ‘Best of 2017’, was a world scoop. It’s an account of a film she made in North Korea. Kim Jong Un respected her freedoms (pretty much) and though sardonic at times, it showed us a unique view of what goes on there.
But this new book is a different sort of memoir. Broinowski resurrects her 1980s diary. The opening chapter shows her, aged 17, at Sydney Uni’s Orientation Week. Unlike the other young women at Wesley College, who asked, “Where did you go to school?” and, “What does your father do?”, Anna was an international, the daughter of diplomats. Her childhood was spent in the Philippines, Burma, Iran and Japan. She should have been worldly-wise, but she wasn’t;
