“East Commerce: A Journey Through China E-Commerce, and the Internet of Things” by Marco Gervasi

Google vs. Baidu. Amazon vs. Taobao. Whatsapp vs. WeChat. And, most recently, Uber vs. Didi.

There is clearly a divide between China and the rest of the world when it comes to internet companies. Homegrown Chinese tech firms have fought off American challengers attempting to enter the Chinese market. Chinese firms have tried to expand their presence abroad. Alibaba had the largest IPO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Tencent is trying to market WeChat to non-Chinese consumers, and has invested significant stakes in Western video game companies, including an outright purchase of League of Legends’s developer Riot Games.

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“The Tale of Aypi” by Ak Welsapar

Set in the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan during the final years of the USSR, The Tale of Aypi by Ak Welsapar focuses on the lives of the inhabitants of a small Turkmen village on the banks of the Caspian Sea. As the story begins, the sleepy fishing village has recently been informed by the central government that everyone is to be relocated to a nearby urban center so that their land can be used for the construction of a new hospice.

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“Among the Headhunters: An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival in the Burmese Jungle” by Robert Lyman

Here we have a real curiosity—a history of Nagaland up to August 1943. Nagaland is a state in the extreme northeast of India bordering Myanmar, and the history is a curiosity because the only event of much significance to ever happen there was the battle of Kohima in 1944. Why would someone write a history of Nagaland without mentioning the battle? The answer is that Lyman is an experienced historian with 14 books to his credit. One of them deals specifically the battle and its aftermath. Among the Headhunters is the back story.

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“Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built” by Duncan Clark

Jack Ma once described online shopping as a dessert in the United States, but the main course in China. That’s one of a set of key differences between developed-economy e-commerce and that of China, differences that escorted eBay out the Chinese door and kept Amazon as a minor player here, while the Alibaba Group has become the world’s largest retailer, the company with the largest IPO ever (US$25 billion in September 2014, though NTT DoCoMo’s 1998 IPO of $18.1 billion is about the same in current US dollar terms) and the nexus of around two-thirds of all parcels delivered in China. Writing for Harvard’s Working Knowledge in May 2014, Professors William Kirby and F Warren McFarlan assert that Alibaba “has done more for China’s small- and medium-sized enterprises than any government policy, ministry, or bank.”

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“Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora” by Sana Aiyar

Indians have contributed to Kenya’s multiracial tapestry for centuries. At Independence, Indians constituted two percent of the population and formed its petty bourgeoisie. By 1968 Kenya hosted over 170,000 Indian residents. Occupying key roles in the economy and civil service, Indians played no small part in the twentieth-century history of Kenya. Yet, as Sana Aiyar argues in Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora, an overwhelming emphasis placed on singular territoriality, coupled with the racially bounded nature of scholarship on Kenyan nationhood, has resulted in the historiographical marginalization of Indians, who are assumed to be historically insignificant.

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“Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat” by Seung Hyok Lee

Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat is a fascinating and well-written study of populism and irrationality in Japan, reminiscent in many ways of Charles Mackay’s 19th-century Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds—illustrated here by the drivers behind the transformation in Tokyo’s attitude to Pyongyang between 1998, 2006 and on to today.

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“Flock of Brown Birds” by Ge Fei

In the author’s preface to Flock of Brown Birds, Ge Fei writes of his response to those who have told him that they do not understand the work: “I don’t blame you. I’m not sure I understand it either.”

Straightforward comprehension is, however, far from the point in this slight novella. Self-consciously inspired by the work of Borges and Kafka, Flock of Blown Birds functions to some extent as obscure allegory, but most closely resembles a dream in its circular logic and narrative inconsistencies.

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