To keep a promise to his calligraphy teacher, JJ travels on the ocean liner “Le Cambodge” to Shanghai via Hong Kong in 1954. On board, he makes friend with Fred, and JJ’s longing for friendship will divert him from keeping his promise. After being stranded in Hong Kong with no money or passport, JJ agrees to cross illegally the China border and to become involved in a shady art deal.
In a Singapore shopping mall known only as The Emporium, ten-year-old Bee finds himself dealing with many weird and strange tenants. From a mysterious shop selling illegal gameboy cartridges to the disappearance of a Four-Faced Buddha Statue, Bee witnesses these incidents and must make sense of them.
The street quietly watches them grow, dream and die. In Siddhartha Street characters come together and grow apart to draw you into the tale of a quotidian street, in a quaint corner of South India. On the rooftop of the lone apartment block in the street, it’s time for “Saturday night drinking” and a motley crew of men gather to drink.
Arun, a young Mekong upland girl, falls in love and fascination with the forest and all it contains. The murder of a ranger and a frightening epidemic set her against the unprincipled and greedy exploitation of the natural world. The story encourages understanding of the increasing dangers to the environment and to human life that selfish lack of respect for nature creates. Set in a village on the edge of the forest, Tree Crime seeks to portray village life and interactions from an insider’s point of view.
In Burmese Haze (a reference to George Orwell’s classic novel), former US official Erin Murphy gives a personalized history of the past fifteen years of Myanmar history, with particular focus on, if not always from the perspective of, US policy towards this often opaque Southeast Asian country. Murphy was herself in the thick of it, either supporting US policymakers or, for the last decade, in the private sector working to assist US-Myanmar trade and investment relations.
In these stories of unease, readers will find an ailing son trying to rewrite his father’s ignoble death, a Seoul taxi driver who succumbs to a devil’s plan, a park that offers one man redemption, and another, King George’s in Hong Kong, that haunts its one-time visitor.
Rise of the Water Margin immerses the reader in a near-future world grounded in American and Chinese cultural and political landscapes bickering over climate responsibility wherein technology challenges humanity to redefine its relationship with the Earth.
