“Readers should know that Reed's book, even as it pushes the New Melanesian Ethnography forward in important ways, will also be of great value to those with little interest in that paradigm…he writes poignantly of [the prisoner's] need to forget and of the way dreams, visits, and other intrusions of the outside world make forgetting an ultimately impossible project. The book is studded with songs, poems, and dream accounts that make this argument wholly convincing and give the book a human immediacy that does not always mark the work of New Melanesian Ethnographers… There are many further complexities to Reed's account
powerful arguments about the nature of time both inside and outside prison, for example, and an interesting discussion of prison conversions..."  ·  Contemporary Pacific "…a great strength of this book is its description of ideas that resonate all over the country…Reed’s writing is always lucid and often bold."  · JRAI "The book corresponds well with recent studies that attempt to understand Papua New Guinea’s varied social scene and the political and economic realities of this recently independent country, and should be read by anyone interested in postcolonial conditions in Melanesia."  · Focaal