A compilation of reviews in the past twelve months for Women in Translation month (August 2025), including non-fiction and poetry and well as novels, short stories and children’s books. These include translations from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Sumerian, Bengali, Kannada, Hindi, German, Vietnamese, Thai and Kurmanji.
Keru Cai’s Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism examines the ways in which early 20th-century Chinese writers drew upon Russian works about the socially downtrodden to describe poverty, in a bid to enrich Chinese culture by creating a syncretic new realism. Modern Chinese realist writers turned to the topic of material poverty—peasants suffering from famine, exploited…
This book tells the inside story of how Singapore defied considerable odds to develop a dynamic economy and cohesive society in the 60 years since the city-state’s independence. Through in-depth interviews with some of the nation’s most influential leaders—Abdullah Tarmugi, Chan Sek Keong, Cheong Koon Hean, Halimah Yacob, Peter Ho, Khaw Boon Wan, Lim Siong…
A deeply moving and often hilarious new novel by the author of The Wangs vs The World following a woman who becomes an internet folk hero in the most unexpected way, catapulting her into fame and influence just as she’s finally beginning to reckon with her complicated past.
The poet in Brown God’s Child makes no bones about laying bare the cultural rooting of her identity in the very first poem of the volume. Be it through “burnt caramel”, the colour of her God’s skin or the sounds of her language—half Sanskrit and half Dravidian—poet Smitha Sehgal makes her entry as a formidable…
Cindy Fazzi’s two-book series follows a Filipino American bounty hunter as he tracks down his most elusive assignments and discovers explosive secrets.
Yoga has become highly popular worldwide and is generally received with enthusiasm in the western world. But it is mysterious in nature as, several interpretations have been offered by scholars from antiquity to recent times. Earlier, Yoga was practiced in the spiritual, philosophical and metaphysical sense in Indic traditions. In the medieval period, it was…
The Asian Review of Books is supporting four sessions of authors from Japan, Korea and the Philippines, including the Akutagawa Prize-winner Rie Qudan, at the 2025 Hong Kong Book Fair.
In 1898, during an era of racial terror at home and imperial conquest abroad, the United States sent troops to suppress the Filipino struggle for independence. The deployment included three regiments of the famed African American “Buffalo Soldiers.” Among them was David Fagen, a twenty-year-old private in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, who achieved notoriety after deserting…
An illuminating portrait of how Shanghai’s Catholic community surged back to life after the Cultural Revolution—and of a Church divided between allegiance to the Vatican and loyalty to the Communist party-state.
Best known in Singapore as the writer and performer of the smash-hit comedy album “Why U So like dat?’, Siva Choy was a multi-talented musician, journalist, stand-up comedian, movie actor and teacher. An intimate and revealing new book paints an affectionate portrait of a life filled with pioneering artistic endeavour.
A visual enactment of attempts at articulating, Eke is the at-tempt-ation towards meaning. What does the feeling of holding your words and thoughts back—stuck and struck in a state of percolation, a plasma state of signification—feel like? What does it look like for ambivalence and divergence to converge during the moment of articulation, when all…
The work of Charles Tripp—professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for over three decades—has shaped a distinct approach to the study of Middle East politics: an analytical sensibility that is empirically rich, theoretically insightful, and historically sensitive.
Ma Thanegi’s roots are deeply planted in Myanmar. She’s the great-niece of a noble scoundrel who once ornamented the court of King Thibaw, her country’s last king, and the great-granddaughter of one of the last queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The daughter of a sophisticated, mercurial intellectual and the brilliant, tempestuous beauty who was his wife, Ma Thanegi…
It started as a British experiment in 1933: Could the Malays form an effective modern fighting force? From an experimental company of 25 raw recruits, within 10 years the regiment created legendary heroes in their gallant last stand against the Japanese in Singapore, February 1942.