“[We] ran up the hills where, as you looked down toward the sea, the flooded rice fields lay shining in the sunlight like a broken mirror.” ~ Colin McPhee

NONFICTION

Eat, Pray, Love One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006 — The last third of the book, which covers “Love”, is set in Bali and wonderfully evokes the island and its residents.

A House in Bali, Colin McPhee, 1944 — A Canadian composer and musicologist and “ultra-modernist”, the author became interest in gamelan music, traveled to Bali in the 1930’s and wrote a classic memoir about the island, it’s people and it culture – and captured the “sensory overload” that still characterizes the island today.

Fragrant Rice: A Taste of Passion, Marriage and Food, Janet DeNeefe, 2004 — The Australian author lives with her Balinese husband and four children in Bali where her experience running a restaurant and other businesses inspired this recipe/lifestyle book.

FICTION

Painted Alphabet, Diana Darling, 1992 — The American sculptor and Bali resident re-imagines a classic local folktale about a Balinese witch as a fantasy novel.

Bali Behind the Seen: Recent Fiction from Bali, Various — A short story collection by contemporary Balinese fiction writers confronting the forces of tourism and modernization in paradise.

A Little Bit of One O’Clock, William Ingram, 1998 — A westerner’s warm, intuitive, witty novel about living with a local family, and their spiritual link to their community and ancestors.