As a foreign correspondent for Time magazine, Tim McGirk spent many years based in Asia. Among his postings was Hong Kong, where he lived in a harbor-side Chinese junk, so it’s not surprising that his first novel has a maritime flavor. His The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers [...]
Hello fellow bookworms, It has been a long time since I last posted. As usual, it’s that old enemy to blame – a lack of time. I've been extremely busy with my day job, work on books for the new publishing venture Plum Rain Press, a Taiwan history podcast called [...]
On June 1, 2024, my literary friend Bradley Winterton passed away at the age of 86 at his home in Saigon. Before his passing, I had been working on his book Moments of Vision: Views and Reviews from East Asia. In fact, just three days before his death, he wrote [...]
In my review of Simon Rowe’s Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2020), I wrote of the titular “Pearl City” chapter: “It’s a very satisfying story but one that leaves you wanting a full novel. We want to ride with Ms. Suzuki again.” And that’s exactly what we get [...]
John Ross chats with Scott F. Crawford, an American writer based in East Asia. They talk about Scott’s Silk Road Centurion, published by Camphor Press in 2023, a historical adventure set in the Chinese borderlands two millennia ago. * * * Scott, we first met, online at least, five years [...]
The book is surely man’s greatest invention. Sometimes, though, there’s a faulty leap in logic equating the civilizational glory of printed text with the arrival of Johannes Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press circa 1440. That’s a Eurocentric and modernity-skewed way of looking at things. Over the last two millennia, it is [...]
Bridging East & West is a fast-paced and fun account of Kathie Wei-Sender’s long, fascinating life, from childhood dangers during the Sino-Japanese War to an arranged marriage and move to the United States, to a career in nursing and then a reinvention as bridge champion mixing with world political leaders. [...]
Jen Paolini speaks with author John Saeki and reviews his The Last Tigers of Hong Kong. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Hong Kong stood as the backdrop to a spate of urban developments, transforming from “a barren rock” to a desirable port city in a matter of decades. [...]
SPOILER ALERT: Plot details of the novel Lily Narcissus are discussed in this interview. Jonathan Lerner lived in Taipei for two years in the late 1950s when his father, a foreign service officer, was stationed there. Later he was involved with the leftist Students for a Democratic Society, and then [...]
This engrossing novel of expat life in Taipei in the late 1950s is a story which stays with you. That’s due, in part, to the interesting, believable characters, but also because the ending leaves a few threads untied. The minor mystery of the “Narcissus” in the title is easily enough [...]