Peter Stanger of Rodmell Avenue
Born in Borneo, Peter Stanger is British. He lived in Egypt
and India as a child, but was educated in England, graduating
in music at Cambridge University (Gonville and Caius College).
Throughout his music career, he has conducted many hundreds
of performances of operas, operettas and musicals, one hundred
of which
were with Scottish Opera based in Glasgow, where he lived
in the 1970s and 80s.
During the past fifteen years he has travelled in 29 countries
of the world, predominantly in Asia, Africa and South America,
as well as living in Canada and South Korea. The resultant
16,000 slide photographs contain portrayals of the Indonesian
islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Komodo
and Flores, as well as Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo, and
Mindanao in the Philippines. Other Asian lands explored
and photographed include most areas of South Korea, as well
as throughout China.
His African travels have been in Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso,
Mali, together with Morocco, Namibia and Kenya. At the start
of the new millennium festivities, at 00.01 hours on 1st
January 2000, he was under arrest in Timbuktu, being interrogated
in the police station on a trumped-up charge.
In South America, his Brazilian escapades included being
a few feet from wild Jacare (alligators) in the interior’s
Mato Grosso, then on a hammock-swinging local steamer down
the Amazon from Manaus to Santarem, where in the rainforest
he swam in a placid river full of piranha, having been assured
by the locals that the fish weren’t in a man-eating
mood.
In the Andes, he tramped the Llanganuco-Cashapampa trail
which climbs to 15,585 feet in central Peru, and descended
into the devil-worshipped silver mines at Potosí
in Bolivia. On a deserted stretch of the 4000-metre altiplano
in winter, he survived a night outside without an insulating
mat, with bottles bursting beside him in the fuel-freezing
cold. Perhaps because of this, he later set off into the
hot Ecuadorian rainforest, and slept under fronds of palm.
In other parts of the world, he swam in the Arctic Ocean
in near winter at Prudhoe Bay (Alaska), climbed a high volcano
in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island,
and had stones thrown at him while being driven in a remote
part of Turkey.
He has spent most of the past four years writing and preparing
this book on China, which by comparison has been quite a
relief
Inside the books
This is a 14,000-mile journey through China that encompasses
everything one imagines, presented in two volumes. In Book
One, Peter depicts memorable landscapes in the deserts of
Xinjiang, and the busyness of the barge-filled Grand, fantastic
Buddhist temples, the tranquil classical gardens of Suzhou
and secluded sections of the Great Wall.
Peppered throughout are the humorous stories that any journey
within a plethora of stunningly evocative photographs. Peter
also describes personal spiritual events encountered before
and during the travels, which lead finally to a new understanding
and explanation of why we are all here.
What is unique about Peter's self-published book?
· Book One is the first known travelogue of any country
to include as many as 418 colour photographs.
· A music compilation CD comes with each volume.
The music and sounds enhance the sense of travel, the topic
of the surrounding text, or the movement through life –
much as in movies or on TV.
· Major essays on some of the highest themes of
Life are incorporated. In Book One, these include science
v. religion, God’s relationship with evil and suffering,
as well as the differences between East and West concerning
friendship. The investigations are primarily inspired by
the true incidents that occur in the journey.
· Chinese tones/accents have been added to virtually
all Chinese words in English – no publication covering
most of China has achieved that before.
· The climax, in Book Two, is the author’s
solution of the Meaning of Life for all species and all
universes, which has not been presented by any philosopher,
theologian or anyone who has been traced. It is not theoretical,
but arises out of his enforced experiences, which are depicted
like a thread throughout the books.
· The indexes (8 large pages in Book One) give the
column or footnote that a reference is in. This saves reams
of time searching for a word that does not appear in a column,
or which only appears in a footnote.
ISLANDS IN CHINA
STEPS TO THE BED OF GOD BOOK ONE
418 colour photographs includes music CD
Hardback [this book will not appear in paperback]
317 x 245 x 28mm (12 x 9 x 1 inches)
352 pages on 135 gsm silk quality paper
Full colour printing by Cambridge University Press
Through selected UK bookstores £59.95 (publisher’s
price)
ISBN: 0 9539874 0 X Published 9th October 2001
PUBLISHER: DISTRIBUTOR:
Pagoda Publishing
114A Rodmell Avenue Saltdean East Sussex BN2 8PJ
Tel 1273-390351 Fax 1273-390351
Email ps@pagodapublishing.com
Web http://www.pagodapublishing.com
All photographs copyright © Peter Stanger 200
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