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 [...]
Any expat in Asia grumbling about the stifling summer heat, oversized bugs, or the difficulty of tracking down decent cream cheese, would do well to read Rosie Milne’s superb Olivia & Sophia. Although at its heart a love story describing the marriages between British colonial official Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles [...]
Idiocy, Ltd.: A Genre-Bending Collection from Taiwan [Editor’s note: Eric Mader is an American expat writer working in Taiwan. His satirical novel A Taipei Mutt was published in 2002, and he has since published a collection of essays, Heretic Days. His most recent book, Idiocy, Ltd., is reviewed below by [...]
Vincent Stoia is the author of two horror novels set in China, Jin Village and Dark Blossom. Dark Blossom tells the story of a courtesan caught up in a struggle involving various gods, ghouls and the imperial court. Jin Village describes an archaeological dig in a remote mountainous corner of the country; the archaeologists [...]
Patrick Wayland is the author of three novels: The Jade Lady (2012), Deadman Bay (2015), and The Nialhaus Proxy (2016). He was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, graduated from The University of Texas at San Antonio, worked in Silicon Valley in the high-tech industry, and later studied Asian languages in Hong [...]
Heaven Lake is part coming-of-age tale, part travelogue – a thoughtful and thought-provoking story about faith, loneliness, and love. It takes its time with some old-fashioned pacing but rewards the patient reader. It is, I think, the best Taiwan expat novel. Regardless of how you define that category, it’s a [...]
The epic adventure The Rose of Tibet is a stunning work from a largely forgotten writer. Lionel Davidson would make any shortlist for the best thriller writer of the last sixty years whom you’ve never heard of, let alone read. Of his eight novels, three won the prestigious Gold Dagger [...]
Borneo. Few place names are more evocative of old-style adventure. Steamy jungles, headhunting Dayaks, exotic wildlife, and scantily clad native women – the stuff that schoolboy dreams are made of. And the most romantic of all was Sarawak, in northwestern Borneo, a kingdom ruled by a dynastic monarchy of Englishmen [...]
In Tiger Tail Soup, Seattle-born Nicki Chen delivers a story of eternal hope, a peaceful life derailed, and womanhood attained in a time of war. The novel begins in 1946 with her Chinese protagonist, young mother Han An Lee, traveling by sedan chair north of Xiamen, through the vast mountains [...]
Are foreign English teachers in Asia losers? The usual caveats aside about the unfairness of painting whole swathes of a population with such broad strokes, yes, there are enough deadbeats to justify the stereotype. I recall my first day at an upmarket exam prep school in Taipei, the director explaining [...]