Category Archive: Non-fiction

New Book Announcement: “Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes”, edited by Renny Thomas and Sasanka Perera

Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes, Sasanka Perera, Renny Thomas (eds) (Tulika Books, December 2025)

The volume presents a set of keywords and concepts embedded in the languages of South Asia and its vast cultural landscape. It reiterates specific attitudes, ways of seeing and methods of doing, which are embedded in the historical and contemporary experiences in the region. The words, concepts, ideas and attitudes in this volume explore the contexts of their production and how their meanings might have changed at different historical moments. The volume also attempts to work out if these words and concepts can infuse a certain intellectual rigor to reinvent social sciences and humanities in the region and beyond.

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New Book Announcement: “Political Thought and Japan’s New Left Movements”, edited by Christopher Perkins and Ferran De Vargas

Political Thought and Japan’s New Left Movements: Transformations in Radical Theory, Christopher Perkins, Ferran De Vargas (eds) (Bloomsbury, January 2026)

Arguing for the importance of taking Japanese political thought seriously, this book is the first to bring together authoritative essays by world experts on the thinkers who shaped Japan’s New Left movement. In doing so, it demonstrates the distinctiveness and significance of Japanese left-wing thought, providing an invaluable resource for students of 20th-century radical politics.

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New Book Announcement: “Meandering to Manila” by Keith Dalton

Meandering to Manila, Keith Dalton (Dalton Books, November 2025)

Keith Dalton was a journalist with foreign correspondent dreams. He had them as a 10-year-old. They never went away. Dalton was 25 when he crammed a typewriter in his backpack and set off from Australia to Southeast Asia, convinced he could be a self-made foreign correspondent. Writing as he went, Dalton took buses, trucks, trains, planes, passenger ferries, cargo ships, and canoes.

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New Book Announcement: “Cross-border intimacies: Affect and emotions in marriage migration between China and Taiwan” by Lara Momesso

Cross-border intimacies: Affect and emotions in marriage migration between China and Taiwan, Lara Momesso (Manchester University Press, September 2025)

Cross-border Intimacies is a powerful account of the experiences of migrant women and their families between China and Taiwan. Since the early 1990s, economic exchanges between the two countries have paved the way to migration and sociocultural interaction across a previously closed border.

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New Book Announcement: “Fuji: A Mountain in the Making” by Andrew W Bernstein

Fuji: A Mountain in the Making, Andrew W Bernstein (Princeton, September 2025)

Mount Fuji is everywhere recognized as a wonder of nature and enduring symbol of Japan. Yet behind the picture-postcard image is a history filled with conflict and upheaval. Violent eruptions across the centuries wrought havoc and instilled fear. Long an object of worship, Fuji has been inhabited by deities that changed radically over time. It has been both a totem of national unity and a flashpoint for economic and political disputes. And while its soaring majesty has inspired countless works of literature and art, the foot of the mountain is home to military training grounds and polluting industries. Tracing the history of Fuji from its geological origins in the remote past to its recent inscription as a World Heritage Site, Andrew Bernstein explores these and other contradictions in the story of the mountain, inviting us to reflect on the relationships we share with the nonhuman world and one another.

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New Book Announcement: “Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss and a Home in Time” by Samina Najmi

Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss and a Home in Time, Samina Najmi (Trio House Press, October 2025)

“All points on a circle are always the same distance from the center.” These exquisite personal essays trace the orbit of Pakistani-American author Samina Najmi as she reflects on events, people, and places that shape her traditional childhood in Pakistan and continue to inspire her as she pursues her dreams of education and travel, enlarging her vision and experience of the world.

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New Book Announcement: “Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism: From Russia, with Squalor” by Keru Cai

Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism: From Russia, with Squalor, Keru Cai (Oxford University Press, August 2025)

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 urban laborers, homeless orphans—to convey their sense of textual poverty and national backwardness.

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New Book Announcement: “How Singapore Beat the Odds: Insider Insights on Governance in the City-State” by WL Terence Ho

How Singapore Beat the Odds: Insider Insights on Governance in the City-State, WL Terence Ho (World Scientific Publishing, July 2025)

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 Guan, Ravi Menon, Seah Jiak Choo, Tan Yong Soon, Eddie Teo, Teo Ming Kian—How Singapore Beat the Odds explores various facets of public policy that shaped Singapore’s remarkable transformation.

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New Book Announcement: “Yogis, Bhaktas & Sufis: Religious Traditions in Medieval North India, c. 1000-1450” by Subin Sabu

Yogis, Bhaktas & Sufis: Religious Traditions in Medieval North India, c. 1000-1450, Subin Sabu (Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House, June 2025)

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 transformed by Hathayoga where physical exertions were applied to achieve the path of Samadhi. Also, it influenced two mainstream traditions prevalent in north India, Hinduism and Islam, in creating their respective mystical movements.

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New Book Announcement: “Fagen: An African American Renegade in the Philippine-American War” by Michael Morey

Fagen: An African American Renegade in the Philippine-American War, Michael Morey (University of Wisconsin Press, paperback edition, July 2025)

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 to join the Filipino guerrillas.

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