BOOKS/CANADA

TRAVELS TO THE PAST

Sindh Revisited by Christopher Ondaatje; HarperCollins; 351 pages

Victorian England's most romantic explorer, Richard Burton, felt least at home when he was on British soil. The passion for exotic scenes that eventually took him to the Middle East and the sacred city of Mecca, and to Africa on a search for the source of the Nile, was awakened during the seven years in the 1840s when he was an army officer in India. To gain insight into the scholar-adventurer, Canadian entrepreneur and author Christopher Ondaatje, 63, set out on a pilgrimage retracing Burton's travels in the Sindh, which is now a province of Pakistan, and interviewing Burton experts. The Ceylon-born Ondaatje was accompanied by Haroon Siddiqui, a Muslim from India who is an editor of the Toronto Star; together they covered thousands of kilometers on a trek that took them more than a century back into India's history. At each step of their journey--often protected from the Sindh's sporadic civil unrest by an armed guard--both men looked carefully around them, honestly and fearlessly interpreting the past.

The generous, urbane Ondaatje discovered he had an affinity for the enigmatic man who shocked sensibilities with his translation of the Kama Sutra. Ondaatje came to understand India's enduring influence on the restless, impressionable young Burton. Seduced by the subcontinent's diversity of people and spiritual beliefs and absence of prudery about human sexuality, Burton cast off forever the conventions of mid-19th century England and embraced a wider world.'

BOOKS/UNITED STATES

CHRONICLER OF THE HIGH AND MIGHTY

Powerful People by Roy Rowan; Carroll & Graf; 300 pages

For 50 years U.S. journalist Roy Rowan has been an astute spectator in the corridors of power, observing the men and women who have passed through and writing about them first for Life magazine and later for TIME and FORTUNE. Beginning in China with the civil war and the triumph of Mao Zedong, Rowan, 76, has been an eyewitness to many of this century's momentous events. He covered East Germany before Walter Ulbricht erected the Wall, and was on duty during both the Korean and the Vietnam wars. In each of his postings, Rowan focused on the deeds and aspirations of the high and mighty.

The great and the unworthy alike parade by in Rowan's informal memoir of a life in journalism. The Philippines' Imelda Marcos is the "Iron Butterfly" whose greed undermined her husband's regime. U.S. labor boss Jimmy Hoffa had a give-no-quarter view on the use of power: "Don't arbitrate grievances. Strike the bastards instead." Determination and the willingness to fight for a cause, Rowan concludes, are characteristics of powerful people. And the key to rising out of adversity is a sense of purpose. On assignment in 1990 for PEOPLE magazine, Rowan disguised himself as a homeless man and spent two weeks trying to survive on New York City streets. There he learned that, as one denizen of the lower depths told him, "you can live without money. But you can't live without plans."

EXHIBITS/NEW ZEALAND

ART THAT'S QUICKER THAN THE EYE

"Transformers: A Moving Experience"; Auckland Art Gallery's New Gallery

Now you see it, now maybe you don't. Change is the theme for an exuberant exhibit by artists from 10 countries. If it spins, drips or flames, it's in Auckland. Since the April opening, 15,000 visitors have delighted in the amusement-park atmosphere, staring, for example, with amused alarm at Hallucination, an interactive video by the U.S.'s Jim Campbell. As people watch, they appear to be set on fire. Another crowd pleaser is American Paul McCarthy's Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma; it can be seen only by spectators properly attired in a Pinocchio costume furnished by the gallery.

Gallerygoers are also abuzz over Nature's War by Garnett Puett, who lives in Hawaii; inside a clear Plexiglas case, 30,000 bees go about the business of building a hive. "Composition need not be finite," says Andrew Bogle, the show's curator. "It can be a state of flux." Georges Seurat's pointillism, the paintings executed with dots of color for the viewer's eye to assemble into people, places and things, gets a bouncy parody from Australian Nike Savvas. Her Simple Divisions consists of thousands of different-hued, vibrating polystyrene balls. More subtle is H2O by Dutch-born Juan Geuer. Shining through a slowly swelling water droplet is a laser beam; in a darkened room, the light casts shifting patterns. To critics who have sniffed that the exhibit is just flash with no depth: You might check that your nose hasn't grown lately.

THEATER/THE NETHERLANDS

AFTER THE FALL

Srebrenica! by Guus Vleugel and Ton Vorstenbosch; Transformer House Theater Group Amsterdam

For the Dutch soldiers in Bosnia serving under the United Nations flag, the fall of Srebrenica last July was not their finest hour. Bosnian Serb forces overran the U.N.-designated safe area, and the more than 300 peacekeepers of the military unit Dutchbat abandoned the Muslim civilians they were sent to protect. Thousands of Muslims are believed to have died in the bloodbath that followed. At home a parliamentary investigation in November exonerated Dutchbat, declaring that its members had done all they could, given the circumstances.

Fairly or unfairly, an acidly satirical play in Amsterdam portrays a complacent nation that has glossed over the tragedy. Before performances began, the Ministry of Defense attacked the production for giving a "false picture" of the military's role and treating "the experiences and feelings of Dutchbat in a denigrating way." Directed by Gerardjan Rijnders, the play revolves around Corrie, a housewife and mother. The safe return of her soldier son Roberto from Srebrenica is at first a reason to celebrate. But as reports emerge about what happened, she is ashamed and orders him from the house. He deflects blame with a comment that has chilling overtones: "I'm a soldier. I just do what I'm told." Corrie soon learns that her neighbors either don't know or don't care about what happened so far away. Genocide isn't that bad, she and Roberto are smugly reassured, so long as it happens somewhere else.

--By Emily Mitchell. With reporting by James Geary/Amsterdam and Simon Robinson/Auckland