A
portrait of the heart of the True Believers....For over three decades Bob Ellis has trodden the fringes of the corridors of power. Here he gives a personal insight into the tribe that is the Australian Labor Party: the personalities, the quirks, the fabled anecdotes and the grand ideals. Goodbye Jerusalem is a reflection on the nature of Labor politics in Australia, its flaws, its heroes, its victories and its bitter defeats.
'If for nothing else - not the eloquent snapshots of some historical
moments, the gut-wrenchingly emotional eulogies to dead and dying friends,
the revelations of unguarded conversations with both Labor and Liberal
figures - read Bob Ellis's new book for its scarifying, frequently hilarious
and uncannily precise descriptions of both friends and enemies...
The writing, at its best, is as brilliant, lucid, powerful and bitchy
as Gore Vidal, the vignettes of the nights in politics where you get a
"blast of wild treachery and weirdness that not even the hard boys
can handle" as sparkling as the master of the campaign trail's fear
and loathing himself, Hunter S. Thompson.'
- Sally Loan, The Sydney Morning Herald
'Bob Ellis belongs firmly to the great tradition of eccentric intellectuals who have brightened and inspired the Labor side of politics...He is an amusing storyteller, at times an acute observer, and his prose at its best is sharp and original.'
- Dennis Altman, The Sunday Age
'Of such rhetoric we need to hear much more.'
- Peter Pierce, Australian Book Review
Published Random House, 1997