Arthur Meursault, author of Party Members, talks with Eric Mader, an American expat writer working in Taiwan. Mader's published works include A Taipei Mutt (2002) and more recently Idiocy, Ltd., which has been translated into Chinese. This Author Interview is by far the longest we've had on Bookish Asia so I've switched from having [...]
China’s censors can be a sensitive bunch. Once upon a time, I worked as an “Editorial Assistant” on a tier-2 city expat rag. Though little more than a glorified copy writer and far removed from the forefront of cutting journalism (my biggest scoop was tracking down the reservation number of [...]
Lust & Philosophy is Isham Cook’s first novel and radically different from his other books. Isham's previously published works were anthologies of either short stories or critical essays, but this time he has attempted to create a full-length semi-autobiographical novel with academic references so deep you'll need an excavator to [...]
Whether you’ll enjoy Isham’s Massage and the Writer depends on how open-minded you are. If you’re conservative – either of the traditional “thou shall not covet thy neighbour” type, or the more malignant PC liberal type that views any intimate encounters between white men and foreigners as some kind of [...]
Once a platform for many a fine author – Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft, HG Wells … hell, even Charles Dickens – the short story has long fallen out of favour. Nineteenth century authors looking to establish themselves would submit their short stories or serialized novel to magazines and journals. [...]
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.) This book on China and the Chinese will contain no apologies. It will present no strenuous effort, where uncomplimentary revelations are made, to drag in some supposedly extenuating or counterbalancing virtue possessed by the [...]