The Myanmar-China border stretches for over 2,000 kilometres between China’s Yunnan Province and Myanmar’s Kachin and Shan States. The border has long been a site of migration, trade and cultural exchange, and became a particularly significant area of escape during periods of political and economic hardship. The impact of this border on individual lives is the focus of Wen-Chin Chang’s new book, Echoes from the Sino-Burmese Borderlands: Untold Stories of Overland Chinese Migrants during the Cold War.
Author: Maximillian Morch
The Ganges may be more famous, but the Brahmaputra is arguably a far more geopolitically important river. By the time it reaches Bengal, it forms the largest delta in the world, having crossed through Tibet, India and Bangladesh. This river, and the people who live along its banks, are the subject of River Traveller, the new book by Sanjoy Hazarika. Hazarika has spent decades writing about India’s Northeast. A journalist, researcher, and filmmaker, he wrote Strangers of the Mist back in 1994, a landmark work on the region’s fractured politics, history, and identity, along with several other books. His newest work blends is part travelogue, part reportage, shaped by decades of fieldwork. Through a series of vignettes, Hazarika follows the river’s trajectory through Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam down to Bangladesh.
The Chao Phraya river, which runs through Bangkok, is the subject of Michael Hurley’s Waterways of Bangkok: Memories, Landscape and Twilights. An ethnographical study of the river, the book portrays not just the river itself, but Bangkok’s relationship with it. Split into five chapters—origins, loss, erasure, belonging and trajectory—the book argues that the Chao Phraya is not just a river, but rather the “binding thread of the Thai heartland, the realm of a traditional way of life, and also enshrined in the state-promoted Thai national story.”
One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam is the latest book by renowned Assamese writer Devabrata Das. This collection of eighteen short stories, translated from the Assamese original, offers a unique and varied portrait of contemporary Assam. Remarkably, despite being translated by several individuals, including the author himself, the prose maintains a cohesive and consistent style throughout. Several stories deal with both Assam’s historical, and contemporary political challenges.
Akha Ghanr is, for Akha communities, a “highly pragmatic system of customary law encompassing an entire way of life”, or it could be better described as “Ancestral ways”, acknowledging the role and leadership of their ancestors, something that is central to Akha identity and culture. How it has changed over time is the subject of Micah F Morton’s new book, Enchanted Modernities which explores the evolving role of Akha Ghanr within Akha societies across China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Akha Ghanr isn’t a religion in itself but rather an intricate set of ancestral cultural practices that shape Akha society. How Akha Ghanr has adapted to modernity and high rates of Christian conversion is a crucial part of this book, as is the role of neo-traditionalists seeking to both preserve Akha Ghanr and adapt it to the realities of modern life.
In Praise of Floods is the final book by James C Scott, a renowned anthropologist and political scientist, published posthumously after he died in 2024. Much of Scott’s earlier work has focused on agrarian politics and acts of political resistance, this is a rather different book, focusing instead on the life history of a river, the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy).
Originally written in Russian by Ukrainian novelist Igor Zavilinsky, A Dream of Annapurna spans Nepal, Italy and the US. The book has an equally broad time frame, ranging from the 1950s to 2015.
Released in late 2024, 100 years after the most infamous mountaineering event in history, Other Everests: one mountain, many worlds is not a retelling of the Mallory expedition, but rather an attempt to widen the framing of Everest beyond western mountaineering exploits. Everest has often been seen through the eyes of western explorers and been limited to tales of heroic exploration. This book is a direct attempt to change that and bring “together new perspectives on the historical and cultural significance in the modern world.”
Chie Ikeya’s InterAsian intimacies across race, religion and colonialism focuses on inter-Asian marriage in colonial Burma. Ikeya argues that over time these marriages became “the subject of political agitation, legislative activism and collective violence”.
In Myanmar today, resistance against the 2021 coup and the military regime, has spread across the entire country, and fighting has engulfed the state, displacing millions and leaving the country in a state of turmoil. To explain how we got to this point, and what is the future for both the resistance movement and the Myanmar military, veteran journalist Bertil Lintner provides in The Golden Land Ablaze a detailed background of Myanmar’s political development since Independence in 1948. Over six chapters, Bertil analyzes the coup itself, the military, ethnic politics, the role of China, Myanmar’s politicians and finishes with an overview of the situation today and predictions for future developments.
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