For many of us expats, a trip to the immigration office can be stressful. Apart from the hassle of paperwork, there’s always the possibility of some nasty little surprise – a new regulation, a bureaucratic screw-up, an obscure regulation unknowingly violated – which results in you rushing off to get [...]
Originally from North Carolina, Marshall Moore is an American writer, publisher, and academic living in Hong Kong. Since his debut novel The Concrete Sky (2003) he has written three further novels and three collections of short stories. His latest book is Inhospitable, a ghost story set in Hong Kong (which will be [...]
Joyce Bergvelt is the author of Lord of Formosa, a historical drama describing the fight for Taiwan in the seventeenth century between the Dutch and the pirate warlord and Ming loyalist Koxinga. Like Koxinga himself, who was born to a Japanese mother and a Chinese father, Bergvelt has lived in [...]
Shanghai Lawyer. It’s an uninspiring title and even the author’s name – Norwood F. Allman – has the dullness of an accountant about it. But Allman was very much more than just a lawyer, and his memoir is one of my all-time favourites. For breadth and depth of experience during [...]
Signal 8 Press is a Hong Kong-based publisher founded in 2010 by American expat Marshall Moore. The name comes from the system used in Hong Kong to describe typhoons; a signal 8 warning is issued for a potentially hazardous typhoon and is greeted with celebration by most residents as it means [...]
Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky in the books I’ve read, but, heavens above, diplomats are among the very dullest of writers. They have a tendency to self-importance, unnecessary detail, and verbosity, and, although their professional life calls for a certain mastery of language, too often their skill for saying a [...]
One of the world’s most distinctive cities, Ulaanbaatar finally has the book it deserves. Although Mongolia and Ulaanbaatar are bywords for remoteness, the city has for centuries been an important regional center, resulting in a fascinating mix of traditional and modern, local and foreign influences. Aldrich, an American lawyer and [...]
E. A. Cooper served on Okinawa in the 1960s. His combat duty followed in Vietnam with the Third Marine Division, Third Tank Battalion. After his military service, he attended the University of Georgia, studied broadcast journalism and earned a doctorate in adult education. Cooper served as dean of evening administration with [...]
When I came upon this Dutch-flavored guidebook in Jenny Wilsen’s independent bookstore in Taichung (gone the way of all flesh alas despite my NT$450 purchase) first impressions were decidedly mixed. Beautifully printed and lavishly illustrated, it looked, however, with its multitude of pictures of the author (over fifty of them!) [...]
The subtitle is no exaggeration: the Formosan imposter, who went by the name Psalmanazar, really was one of the greatest charlatans in literary history. As author Graham Earnshaw says, “he not only faked literary works, he faked himself, too.” Despite Psalmanazar writing a confessional memoir, published posthumously, many of the [...]