Norman Lewis was 83 years old when in 1991 he embarked on a series of three arduous journeys into the most contentious corners of Indonesia: into the extreme western edge of Sumatra, into East Timor and Irian Jaya. 'An Empire of the East' is his magnificent swan-song, unearthing the decimation of the tropical rain forests in Sumatra, the all but forgotten Balinese massacre of the communists in 1965, the shell-shocked destruction of East Timor, the stone-age hunter-gathering culture of the Yali tribe (in western Papua New Guinea) and perhaps most chilling of all, his visit to the Freeport copper mine in the sky.