Contains a review of two novels, very different in style and subject matter, however both concerned with the coming of Europeans to the new world of the East, what Europeans make of that new world and what the new world in turn makes of them. Whereas Malouf explores his concerns through the life of one man and the generations of family and friends who frame him, Hasluck weaves his themes around an episode of a couple of weeks duration at the Grotius Institute in post war Holland.