In fact, The Bishop, the Gypsy and
the Dancing Bear is not a story about bears at all, but a story about mankind. It is a story about borders, migration and
freedom. No doubt, there are now many
novels about the concepts of refuge and asylum, but this novel casts the reader
into the future, a future left trammelled by the passage of xenophobia and
exclusion. It is a parable, of sorts,
not only relevant in this country (thinly disguised as the country of
Incognita), but to the developed world at large. It considers the biggest questions and
insecurities of our age, one of the most poignant being this one: When we exclude the outsider, are we, in
fact, imprisoning and impoverishing ourselves?
Philomena van Rijswijk is a
Tasmanian novelist, poet and writer of short stories. She has been compared to both Gabriel Garcia
Marquez and Ursula le Guin. Her most
recent novel, The World as a Clockface, was published by Penguin Books
Australia in 2001.
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