Stateless, Chen Tienshi Lara, Louis Carlet (trans) (NUS Press, November 2023)
Stateless, Chen Tienshi Lara, Louis Carlet (trans) (NUS Press, November 2023)

“For the first time in my life, I experienced the terror of international limbo, unable to enter any country. What would happen to me? Would I be trapped forever in an airport?” Japan’s 1972 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Author Chen Tienshi Lara was one of them, born to Chinese parents in Yokohama’s Chinatown.

Sex Tourism in Thailand: Inside Asia’s Premier Erotic Playground, Ronald Weitzer (NYU Press, November 2023)
Sex Tourism in Thailand: Inside Asia’s Premier Erotic Playground, Ronald Weitzer (NYU Press, November 2023)

Thailand is known internationally as a popular sex tourism destination. Yet, despite its size and reputation, remarkably little research has focused on the country’s sex industry over the past two decades. Based on original ethnographic data and other sources, Sex Tourism in Thailand is an expansive yet nuanced study of diverse sex markets and their moral economies.

Ayurveda, Nation and Society: United Provinces, c 1890–1950, Saurav Kumar Rai (Orient BlackSwan, December 2023(
Ayurveda, Nation and Society: United Provinces, c 1890–1950,
Saurav Kumar Rai (Orient BlackSwan, December 2023)

Ayurveda enjoys a growing global appeal, and is often touted as ‘true’ and ‘time-tested’ by contemporary political actors, governments, social groups, practitioners and NGOs in India. With “indigenous” healing systems enjoying increasing state support today, an examination of the socio-political aspects of medicine, in particular Ayurveda, and its role in nation-building is critically important.

Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu–Muslim Friendship After Empire, Sherali Tareen (Orient BlackSwan, December 2023)
Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire, Sherali Tareen (Permanent Black, December 2023)

In this groundbreaking book, Sherali Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim scholars imagined and contested the possibilities and dangers of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. He argues that often what was at stake in Muslim scholarly discourse and debates on this subject were unresolved tensions and fissures over the place and meaning of Islam in the modern world.

Tear-Drenched Earth: Cinema and the Partition of India, John W Hood (Orient BlackSwan)
Tear-Drenched Earth: Cinema and the Partition of India, John W Hood (Orient BlackSwan)

The trauma of Partition is an indelible part of the collective memory of the citizens of India and Pakistan and, later, Bangladesh. With over 15 million displaced and several million dead on both sides of the Radcliffe Line, this massive exodus remains forever a black mark in history. Partition and its aftermath have been central to much of subcontinental cinema, and found frequent and varied representation on screen.

Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu, Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Orient BlackSwan, November 2023)
Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu, Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Orient BlackSwan, November 2023)

Symbols of Substance is a groundbreaking analysis of the political culture and political economy of the small Nayaka states that emerged and flourished in the Tamil country in the 16th and 1th centuries.

At last someone has found a practical application for virtual reality. Brian Kwok teaches design at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University and he has been studying Hong Kong’s neon signs and the culture that surrounds them. It has convinced him that they should be preserved. But how? Kwok has a really difficult row to hoe, and he knows it full well.

Epic in India Tutun Mukherjee (ed), Bharathi Harishankar (ed), (Orient BlackSwan, September 2023)
Epic in India, Tutun Mukherjee (ed), Bharathi Harishankar (ed), (Orient BlackSwan, September 2023)

Through Indian life and culture, the epics of the subcontinent flow like the subterranean River Saraswati. Like Yuddhishthira, who is faced with the puzzling questions posed to him by the enigmatic Yaksha in the Mahabharata, the Indian Everyman, conscious of dharma and niti, is expected to find answers to ethical and existential dilemmas. While the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Silappadikaram are the best known of the sacred narratives of the past, there exists a vast reservoir of other epics—many still in the oral tradition.

Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development, Anto Mohsin (University of Wisconsin Press, December 2023)
Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development, Anto Mohsin (University of Wisconsin Press, December 2023)

Electrifying Indonesia tells the story of the entanglement of politics and technology during Indonesia’s rapid post-World War II development. As a central part of its nation-building project, the Indonesian state sought to supply electricity to the entire country, bringing transformative socioeconomic benefits across its heterogeneous territories and populations.

The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China, Thomas Kelly (Columbia University Press, November 2023)
The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China, Thomas Kelly (Columbia University Press, November 2023)

Why would an inkstone have a poem inscribed on it? Early modern Chinese writers did not limit themselves to working with brushes and ink, and their texts were not confined to woodblock-printed books or the boundaries of the paper page. Poets carved lines of verse onto cups, ladles, animal horns, seashells, walking sticks, boxes, fans, daggers, teapots, and musical instruments. Calligraphers left messages on the implements ordinarily used for writing on paper. These inscriptions—terse compositions in verse or epigrammatic prose—relate in complex ways to the objects on which they are written.