It would take a cold heart not to fall in love with this book from its very opening pages, where in evocative yet never overcooked prose veteran Japan writer Amy Chavez describes the daily rhythms of island life in the coming and going of fishing boats and ferries as seen [...]
The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic is a sober, sensible warning about the potential dangers of various possible futures that lie ahead as China matches the United States in economic might and overtakes it in the coming decades. The China challenge will be different from the [...]
The plainspeople from China brought the legal notion of land title. Well, my father often jokes, “It used to be that if a Paiwan person had walked through a place leaving footprints with his own two feet enough times, that place belonged to him.” Precious little literature from Taiwan’s Indigenous [...]
Is the English-language bookshelf already too full of novels set in pre-WW2 China? Has that rich seam of Shanghai ore not been thoroughly exhausted? And on a broader note, is it time to move on from the Second World War? No, no, and thrice no. Shanghai was by population count [...]
“No poetry or memoirs,” warn some publishers in their submission guidelines. To be paired with poetry – yes, cruel, but the truth is often cruel. The fact is that the general reading public is not interested in non-celebrity memoirs, and the number of sales (or copies given away) is usually [...]
American schoolchildren are taught that the night in 1775 when the famous patriot Paul Revere waited for the signal to inform him whether the invading British were coming by land or by sea, he was told to watch for a lantern that would be hung in the steeple of Boston’s [...]
This illustrated book of Japan’s most famous pilgrimage, which connects 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi (774–835), is like a serene stroll around a beautiful Japanese garden, and one in the company of a genial host. John Lander's images are – as befits the subject manner – [...]
“Compared to…?” It’s a useful retort, a shorthand way of asking for context. “The world today is so unstable!” “Compared to when?“ “Is your mother-in-law nice?” “Compared to what?” And when it comes to an assessment of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his era, a comparative approach is an efficient [...]
An ambitious debut novel from a handsome actor turned aspiring novelist? I must admit I started reading The Eunuch wondering if it would prove a triumph of fan sales expectations over the quality of writing. After an initial hook of interest from the set-up, it took a little time to get [...]
Our Home in Myanmar: Four Years in Yangon is a delightful read, both an accessible introduction to Myanmar and a candid behind-the-scenes look at journalism in a developing country. The “our” in the title refers to the author, Jessica Mudditt, a young Australian, and Sherpa, her Bangladeshi husband, whom she met [...]