New Book Announcement: “The Cloud That Fell From the Sky” by Judy Choi and Phoenix Brown
The debut poetry book from Chinese-American writers Judy Choi and Phoenix Brown.
New Book Announcement: “Old Hong Kong Photos and the Tales They Tell” (Vol. 2) by David Bellis
The ARB reviewer of Volume 1 of Old Hong Kong Photos and the Tales They Tell wrote “Let’s hope the next one comes out soon.” As requested, Volume 2 is now available, with a new selection from David Bellis’s collection of old Hong Kong photos.
New Book Announcement: “Japanese Picture Dictionary” by Timothy G Stout
Deftly illustrating the use of more than 1,500 commonly used Japanese words and phrases, author Timothy Stout gives learners a clear, easy-to-use introduction to this fascinating language.
New Book Announcement: “Korea: The Impossible Country” by Daniel Tudor
In just fifty years, South Korea has transformed itself from a failed state, ruined and partitioned by war and decades of colonial rule, into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. How was it able to achieve this with no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule?…
New Book Announcement: “Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance” by Daromir Rudnyckyj
Beyond Debt describes efforts to create a transnational economy free of debt. Based on research in Malaysia, Daromir Rudnyckyj illustrates how the state, led by the central bank, seeks to make Kuala Lumpur “the New York of the Muslim world”—the central node of global financial activity conducted in accordance with Islam.
New Book Announcement: “The Indian Metamorphosis: Essays in Its Enlightenment, Education and Society” by Arup Maharatna
This book examines various ideational, attitudinal and intellectual impasses that are becoming glaringly apparent on several fronts, and which have held back India’s balanced, steady and uniform development and transformation post-independence.
New book announcement: “The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and its Global Entanglements”, edited by Roham Alvandi
The history of Pahlavi Iran has traditionally been written as prologue to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and firmly located within a national historical context. However, the reign of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979), in fact marked the high-point of Iran’s global interconnectedness. Never before had Iranians felt the impact of global…
New book announcement: “Networked: Business and Politics in Decentralizing Indonesia, 1998-2004” by Wahyu Prasetyawan
Decentralization is among the most important political economic developments in Indonesia over the last thirty years. This book evaluates three cases (in the provinces of East Kalimantan, West Sumatra, and Riau) of deep-seated political conflict and intrigue implicating central government, local governments and multinational companies.
New book announcement: “Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia” by Vannessa Hearman
Drawing on interviews, archival records, and government and military reports, Vanessa Hearman traces the lives of a number of individuals, following their efforts to build a base for resistance in the South Blitar area of East Java, and their subsequent journeys into prisons and detention centres, or into hiding and a shadowy underground existence. She…
New book announcement: “There’s No Poetry in a Typhoon: Vignettes from Journalism’s Front Lines” by Agnès Bun
“I saw my first dead body on November 9, 2013. He was five. He was lying in the rubble of a demolished church that had entombed eight of its faithful in Tacloban City, the ville-martyr of this impoverished region in the Philippines where a violent typhoon had hit only a day before.”
New Book Announcement: “Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America” by Noelle Giuffrida
Separating Sheep from Goats investigates the history of collecting and exhibiting Chinese art through the lens of the career of renowned American curator and museum director Sherman E Lee (1918-2008). Drawing upon artworks and archival materials, Noelle Giuffrida excavates an international society of collectors, dealers, curators, and scholars who constituted the art world in which…
New Book Announcement: “We Have Buried the Past” by ‘Abd al-karim Ghallab
This pioneering postcolonial work, originally published in 1966, was the first breakthrough Moroccan novel to be written in native Moroccan Arabic, rather than in French. Written after the country gained independence, the story follows the trajectory of two generations of al-Tihamis — a well-to-do family residing in Fez’s ancient medina — whose members characterize distinctive…
New book announcement: “China’s Oasis” by David Gotts and Richard Harris
An inspiring tale of love, hope, and opportunity for China’s abandoned children. At the tender age of 22, David Gotts was shocked by the condition of the children at a Chinese welfare centre. International China Concern (ICC) was born that day as David held dying baby Rose in his arms. This moving story spans twenty-five…
New book announcement: “A Shameful Life (Ningen Shikkaku)” by Osamu Dazai
Osamu Dazai is one of the most famous—and infamous—writers of 20th-century Japan. A Shameful Life (Ningen shikkaku) is his final published work and has become a bestselling classic for its depiction of the tortured struggle of a young man to survive in a world that he cannot comprehend.
New book announcement: “Novel” by Vaughan Rapatahana
A violent murder in a rural New Zealand slaughterhouse is the catalyst for a series of fast moving events that ultimately have geopolitical consequences. The rapidly developing action in Novel straddles Aotearoa New Zealand, Hong Kong, Philippines and beyond.