Can we write women’s authorial roles into the history of industrial cinema in South Asia? How can we understand women’s creative authority and access to the film business infrastructure in this postcolonial region? Esha Niyogi De draws on rare archival and oral sources to explore these questions from a uniquely comparative perspective, delving into examples of women holding influential positions as stars, directors, and producers across the film industries in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Experimental Times is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of Bengaluru/Bangalore from a site of “backend” IT work to an aspirational global city of enterprise and innovation. The book journeys alongside the migrant workers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who shape and survive the dreams of a “Startup India” knitted through office work, at networking meetings and urban festivals, and across sites of leisure in the city.
This being the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, operas from the popular Italian composer featured often in the list of operas performed in 2024 in Hong Kong and nearby.
A 2024 round-up of reviews of 75 works in translation from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai through Bengali, Sanskrit and Urdu to Sumerian, Arabic and French: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, children’s books and classics.
This entirely subjective list of 50 highlights from 2024 include reviews of fiction, literature, poetry and non-fiction. Translations remained strong in this year’s list, including literature, poetry and non-fiction, ranging from Chinese, Korean and Japanese, through Thai, Tagalog and Vietnamese to Kazakh, Bengali, Telegu, Arabic, Russian and French. Non-fiction entries ranges from history, biography and memoir to art, photograpy and culture.
How, as we ask every year, did Asia fare in the “Best Books” lists of 2024? As before, this list takes a broad view of what constitutes an “Asian” book. Click on the title for our review and listen to the podcast where listed.
Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social-welfare crises affecting the region. Arvid J Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro fill this gap and put a major asterisk on East Asia’s economic record.
