Why switch from writing non-fiction to fiction, especially when you’ve spent decades working as a journalist and your last book was Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, the acclaimed 2006 portrait of North Korea’s dictators Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il? One advantage of fiction is that it is [...]
Karen Kao’s debut novel The Dancing Girl & the Turtle is an ambitious, striking addition to the novels showing the sleazy side of 1930s Shanghai. Impatient to get to the magical city of Shanghai, recently orphaned 18-year-old Anyi Song disregards instructions to wait for an escort, setting off from Soochow by herself. [...]
To what extent is the international flesh trade the result of nefarious criminals using deceit, threats, and violence to control women and how much of it involves women voluntarily choosing to join the profession and stay in it? Ko-lin Chin, a professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, decided to [...]
Like many long-term expats in Taiwan, American Scott Ezell’s first encounter with the country was rather incidental. He came in 1992, on a friend’s recommendation, to study Chinese, an interest that sprang from his love of the Tang dynasty poets, polymath bohemians like Li Bai who celebrated and lived contemplative [...]
When writing a travel book, you ideally want some kind of framework; whether it's a river journey from source to mouth, the seasons of a year, retracing an explorer’s footsteps, or a pilgrimage to religious sites, you want something to hold the whole together. Formosa Moon has the brilliant setup [...]
Opening Anna Holmwood’s deft translation of A Hero Born, a prefatory list of characters promises the delights waiting within. Skyfury Guo, The Seven Freaks of the South, Quick Hands Zhu Cong the Intelligent, and Twice Foul Dark Wind stand poised to jump-kick readers into a rich, thrilling, sometimes whacky world. [...]
Hong Kong-based Earnshaw Books is one of the more notable independent publishers in East Asia. Founded in 2007 by English journalist, businessman, and musician, Graham Earnshaw, the company grew out of his Tales of Old China website. Most of the early titles were reprints of classics, but Earnshaw Books has since [...]
Kirstin Chen’s novel Bury What We Cannot Take unfolds like a dream sequence, following the fictional fortunes of a southern Chinese family torn apart in 1957, eight years after the Communists’ victory and on the cusp of the Great Leap Forward. The violence and trauma visited upon millions of innocent Chinese [...]
Cheryl Robbins, originally from California, has lived in Taiwan since 1989, working as a freelance translator and writer. As well as numerous articles for a wide range of publications, Robbins has written several travel guides focusing on Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. She is also the founder of Tribe-Asia Company, which works [...]
Stephen G. Craft is a social sciences professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and the author of three books: V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China, Embry-Riddle at War: Aviation Training during World War II, and American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy. American Justice in Taiwan [...]