A collection of 49 poems of varying forms, from scattered verses to prose poetry, Primordial is more than the sum of its parts. Mai Der Vang, equipped with the eloquence and talent for crafting vivid imagery that had made her previous collection a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, brings together the overlaying experiences of the Hmong people, ravaged and displaced by war, and of the elusive, ethereal, endangered saola, a rare species of bovine with a pair of long sword-like horns that only came to be known and classified in scientific terms in 1992.
Peppa Pig gets around. Having survived accusations of giving American kids British accents, Peppa Pig has now visited Korea, on paper anyway (she’s been there on TV and video for many years). Peppa Goes to Seoul, a publication of Penguin Random House’s Korean operation, was released in the latter part of last year in a still-rare rare example of a multinational publisher localising a product for Asia.
Few subjects have progressed as rapidly in recent years as the study of prehistory and ancient history. The ability to decode the human genome has upended everything. In retrospect, archaeologists and linguists got an amazing amount right; the advent of DNA analysis (backed up by huge amounts of computing power) provided a layer of scientific confidence, allowing the other disciplines to progress faster and more accurately.
Nine year-old Mira is always on the verge of getting into hot water. When she tries to stay underwater in a swimming pool for as long as possible, her mother Leela panics and fears she’s drowning. When Mira’s teenaged brother Ashu and his best friend Rahul smoke and drink in a secret hiding place, Mira sometimes lurks nearby. And when Leela dates a swimming instructor from their club, Mira learns the true intentions of “Coach” long before her mother does.
Great Eastern Hotel is a novel of gargantuan proportions. Set in Calcutta of the 1940s and reconstructed from the perspective of 1970s, author Ruchir Joshi has Saki (aka Robi Nagasaki Jones-Majumdar, a scholar of architecture), put together the life and times of Kedar Lahiri, an artist of zamindar (landowning, feudal) origins, paint critical moments in Indian history from the day of the funeral procession for Rabindranath Tagore to the catastrophic famine of Bengal, the Dharamtolla Street procession for the Quit India movement, the Tebhaga movement among the peasants, and the Naxalite movement.
September 2nd will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS Missouri, ending the Second World War. The US decision to drop two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—what drove Japan to surrender, at least in popular history—is still controversial to this day.
The Malayalam edition of the Mini Krishnan-helmed collections of newly translated classic short stories offers readers a glimpse into the changing social landscape of Kerala. Covering stories written and published across forty decades, the writers of The Second Marriage of Kunju Namboodiri and Other Classic Malayalam Stories navigate the various promises of the early 20th century: education, freedom, and the emancipation of women. Venugopal Menon serves as the translator for the nineteen stories of the collection, also contributing a detailed translator’s note that enriches the reading experience. In it, Menon deconstructs the stories, offers insight into their source, and, of course, proffers insights into the translation process that are sagacious enough to warrant a longer essay.
For many Asian families, it might be difficult not to have a memory of ginseng. I remember my mother making tea from American ginseng and my violin teacher using it to infuse his vodka. But I can’t remember ever asking about it or even why it was continually referred to as “American” ginseng, rather than just ginseng.
As Merle Oberon starred in four dozen films during the golden age of Hollywood, she kept a secret that could have immediately destroyed her career: she was biracial and was born and raised in India. While no longer a secret, her story has all but been forgotten. Mayukh Sen’s new biography of Oberon, Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star, the first in decades, uniquely delves into her family’s background going back to Bombay and Calcutta, where she was born and grew up.
Kyungha, a woman living in contemporary Seoul, is burdened by the emotional toll of her past. Deeply empathetic, Kyungha experiences panic attacks and symptoms of anxiety and depression stemming from a harrowing book she wrote about a massacre in a South Korean city. When her friend Inseon suffers an accident, she asks Kyungha to travel to Jeju, an island of Korea’s south coast, to feed her pet bird which will die soon if not tended to. Arriving on Jeju in the midst of a massive blizzard, Kyungha races against the elements to reach the bird, but finds herself in a figurative space where dreams, nightmares and memories collide. phenomena in celebrity practices, cultures, politics, fandom, and economies.
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