When Bitcoin first became a buzzword among early adopters around 2011, it was spoken of by devotees as a revolutionary force, promising to upend finance much like Jimi Hendrix redefined rock music with his electric guitar riffs. But for ‘normies’ or everyday people, the idea was baffling. How could something intangible, not backed by governments or banks, hold real value? In The Devil Takes Bitcoin: Cryptocurrency Crimes and the Japanese Connection, Jake Adelstein unpacks this world with a gripping narrative that blends true crime, investigative journalism, and cultural insight.
Author: Vikram Zutshi
I was born in Bombay and lived there, not far from the Gateway of India, for the first sixteen years of my life. I left the city by the bay soon after turning sixteen. When I returned decades later, I barely recognised it. The city and I had both gone through dramatic changes in the interim. So it was with real anticipation that I picked up The Only City, an anthology of stories about the city of my birth, edited by Anindita Ghose.
Shōtarō Ikenami’s The Samurai Detectives, the first volume in his celebrated Kenkaku Shōbai series, arrives in English translation by Yui Kajita as a lively entry into Japanese historical fiction. Originally published in 1973, this novel captures the shadowy underbelly of Edo-period Japan through the eyes of Kohei, a grizzled ronin turned detective, his 24-year-old son, Daijiro, and an enigmatic swordswoman, Mifuyu. Set against the rigid social order of the Tokugawa shogunate, the story unfolds as a series of episodic cases involving assassinations, lost swords, and illicit love in the bustling capital of Edo (modern Tokyo). Ikenami, a titan of the genre whose prize-winning works sold millions, crafts vivid tales of samurai life that have inspired over a dozen films and TV adaptations.
I spend nearly half the year in Indonesia, so the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival always feels like a homecoming, the one place I can sit with local authors, journalists and historians, swap ideas about books and the country’s latest turns, and catch up with friends I only see once a year.
The recent documentary, The Sea is Our Home immerses viewers in the vibrant yet precarious world of the Bajau Laut, whose stilt houses rise above the turquoise waters of Sabah’s east coast. While this film is centered on the sea nomads of Malaysia, the Bajau Laut can also be found in aquatic settlements across coastal Philippines and Indonesia.
On a recent warm evening in August, I settled into the lush gardens of the Agung Rai Museum of Art in Ubud, in Bali’s hill country, for screenings of two remarkable films: “Island of Demons” from 1933 and “Headhunters of Borneo” from 1936. Directed by Friedrich Dalsheim with Victor Baron von Plessen and, for the first, Walter Spies, these works capture Bali and Borneo under Dutch colonial rule, a decade before Indonesia’s independence in 1945.
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