"The Last Paradise" is the first book in English on Bali

 

 

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Bali - Enchanted Isle

 

 

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Helen Eva Yates' book "Bali - Enchanted Isle" was published in 1933 when Bali was still the Bali of our dreams. Immerse yourself in these two hundred pages and take a step back in time.

 

On Prospero's Isle

 

"Say Bali, and two things come to mind: tourism and paradise. Both are inalienable features of the island, and also incompatible. For as fast as paradises seduce tourists, tourists reduce paradises. Such are the unerring laws of physics: what goes up must come down; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Hardly has a last paradise been discovered than everyone converges on it so fast that it quickly becomes a paradise lost. Nowhere, however, had this struggle been so protracted or intense as in Bali, most pestered and most paradisiacal of islands."

Turn to page 39 in Pico Iyer's "Video night in Kathmandu : and other reports from the not-so-far East" and you get yourself thirty-four pages about Bali that surpasses anything you find in your common-or-garden tourist guide (to read the whole article, SIGN UP - it's free! - and LOG IN). (or try here)