It’s Every Monkey for Themseves, by Vanessa Woods

Imagine you live in a remote village in Central America. Every morning the alarm wakes you up, and for the next 14 hours you run through the jungle, chasing monkeys. You don’t know why you do it. You just do. You see everything. They quarrel. They copulate. They stab each other in the back. Imagine you live in a house with eight other people. You quarrel. You copulate. You stab each other in the back. Slowly, the differences between you and the monkeys - the differences you assumed would always be there – disappear. Memories of civilisation fades. The jungle takes over. Mosquitoes swarm in clouds. Fungus creeps into your crotch. Killer bees conspire to murder you. Something pushes you over the edge. Maybe you smash your head on a rock. Maybe you fall in love with the wrong guy. Maybe it’s something worse. It’s every monkey for themselves is a young woman’s story of life in the jungle. Witty, troubled, and deeply moving, it is about the lovers that trip you up, and the friendships that keep you going. Above all, it is a triumphant account of survival, camaraderie, and love - monkey style.

Voss, by Patrick White

The plot of this novel is of epic simplicity: in 1845 Voss sets out with a small band to cross the Australian continent for the first time. The tragic story of their terrible journey and its inevitable end is told with imaginative understanding.
The figure of Voss takes on superhuman proportions, until he appears to those around him as both deliverer and destroyer. His relationship with Laura Trevelyan is central personal theme of the story.
The true record of Ludwig Leichardt, who died in the Australian desert in 1848, suggested Voss to the author.

Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.

Sophie Cunningham – Geography

“So that is my story. Water runs throught it. So dreams and seasons and light. There is Hollywood and blood; once, twice, many times. There is family and friends. ‘Seinfield’ endend shortly before the last time I slept with Michael and the las episode was, appropriately, a disappointment. There are beatings and police, earthquakes and fires and, at the end, the dead of a princess. There is World Wide Web and planes connecting lovers and family together. There is also a fantasy that we live in a global village and distance makes no difference. It does make a difference, I learnt. Distance makes all the difference in the world.”