"The Sound of One Hand Clapping"
             "Memories, too are Painful"
             Since the beginning of human existence, communication has been the central focus on which our lives have been based, from the first existing cave men to the countless attempts made by NASA to communicate with the universe. The central theme of the novel "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" by Richard Flanagan lies within its title, as it highlights the struggle for communication between a migrant father and his estranged daughter, after the sudden disappearance of her mother. To clap with one hand metaphorically, represents disconnection as they both experience a breakdown in not only communication, but also friendship and trust.
             "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" is set primarily in a post World War II hydro-electric construction camp situated deep in Tasmania wood-land, flashing back to war-time Slovenia and forward to modern day Australia. The harsh reality of the novel begins with Maria Buloh venturing out into a blizzard, leaving her husband Bojan and daughter Sonya of three years, never to return. The reader follows both Bojan and Sonya's individual struggles to make sense of their actions and thus understand and communicate with each other.
             Not long after the loss of her mother to the life changing ghosts of the past, Sonya's life is thrown into despair. She is continually tossed from one family to another like a pawn on a chessboard. Mixed emotions of loneliness and bemusement flood her young mind as she receives continual physical and verbal abuse without just cause. "Your mother was whore, a filthy whore, and I tell you true you are better for her going"(p103). This gives her no sense of belonging, not knowing where she came from or where she was going. Clapping metaphorically to no one but herself, she
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