Wars are always replete with tragedies, and the World War II Battle of Manila, fought between 3 February and 3 March 1945, is one of history’s greatest tragedies. An entire city was destroyed, millions of people were made homeless, and more than 100,000 civilians were killed as Allied forces liberated the Philippine capital from Japanese rule. Naval War College Professor Nicholas Sarantakes, with meticulous research and vivid prose, has written the definitive history of this battle, which was an American victory but, in his words, a “poisoned victory”.
Category Archive: Non-Fiction
Silk Mirage is veteran Central Asia correspondent Joanna Lillis’s compelling and deeply reported account of a nation in flux—one emerging from decades of suffocating authoritarianism yet still struggling to define what freedom means. The book centres on the turbulent period following the 2016 death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s first post-Soviet president and one of the world’s most repressive dictators, and the unexpected reformist turn under his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
When we think of colonialism on the Indian subcontinent, it is first and foremost the excesses of the British East India Company and the pomp of the Raj that come to mind. The legacies of Vasco da Gama and the Estado da India might be added as an afterthought. Outside the small circle of specialists, the mentioning of France in this context will almost certainly draw a blank. In this engaging and insightful account, Robert Ivermee shows that there is much to be gained from studying the “glorious failure” of the short-lived, but consequential French attempt to establish a vast territorial empire in Southern India.
The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, never one to shrink from a challenge, visited Gobustan in Azerbaijan for two decades to prove his theory that the ancestors of today’s Scandinavians left behind the mysterious rock carvings near Baku. Uncanny similarities between petroglyphs showing the long, oared boats of Caspian seafarers and those of the Vikings, and between other rock carvings in both Azerbaijan and Norway tantalized Heyerdahl.
Dahlia Abraham-Klein’s grandfather Haim Abraham lived to 102. She was fortunate to have gotten to know him when she was younger, but it wasn’t until Haim passed away in 1999 that Abraham-Klein learned more about his life thanks to a journal he had left behind. This journal chronicled not just Haim’s life but that of the former Jewish merchant class in Central Asia. Haim wrote his journal entries in Judeo-Farsi, written in a unique cursive Hebrew script from Jews of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Judeo-Farsi is almost extinct now, so it took Abraham-Klein a decade to find someone who could translate and decipher the journal entries into Hebrew. She has taken many of these journal entries and has woven in her own narration in her new book, The Stateless Central Asian Merchant: The Life of Haim Aghajan Abraham Based on His Journal 1897-1986, a unique look into a Jewish community that no longer exists.
In Silk Roads, food writer Anna Ansari connects areas and cuisines not typically associated in English-language cookbooks, traveling from Beijing, to Baku in Azerbaijan. The closest author/chronicler would perhaps be Paula Wolfert, who is known for her Mediterranean cookbooks spanning France, Morocco, and the “eastern Mediterranean” to include Turkey. Ansari’s food memories originate from her ethnically Turkish family who left Iran and settled in the US.
Arundhati Roy’s much-awaited memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me, tackles Roy’s writing career, India’s sweeping political instability, and most of all, a reckoning with an exhilarating character: her mother, Mary Roy. From Roy’s village, fictionalised even here as “Ayemenem”, to the chaotic urban sprawl of Delhi, the book covers Roy’s rocky childhood, her brief architectural foray, her sudden and dizzying literary stardom, and eventually, her settling into the role as one of India’s most beloved—and most widely politicised—writers.
Our beliefs about the past pass through filters both ideological and physical. Cotton, leather and papyrus all disintegrate with time, but fired clay does not. Hence museums filled with jugs and bowls instead of scrolls and clothing. Still, such a vessel inspired one of England’s most celebrated poems, John Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. It seems that Fahad Bishara had a similar epiphany when he beheld a century-old ship’s logbook, or ruznamah. Although written in prose, Monsoon Voyagers evokes Keats by bringing a lost world to life, combining a scholar’s rigor with a poet’s voice.
Tipu Sultan, known as the “Tiger of Mysore”, ruled the southern Indian kingdom of Mysore from 1782 to 1799. Born in 1750 to Haidar Ali, a military leader who gained power through strategic alliances, Tipu inherited a strong state during colonial upheaval. He led Mysore to prominence, fighting the British East India Company in the Anglo-Mysore Wars, and died heroically in 1799 defending Srirangapatna. Tipu stood out for his innovations and controversies. He boosted the economy with silk and trade reforms, introduced a new calendar and coins, and developed iron-cased rockets that impressed British forces. He even sought alliances with Napoleon and the Ottoman Empire to counter British rule. However, his legacy splits opinion: hailed as an anti-colonial hero, he’s also criticized for forcing conversions and destroying religious sites in Malabar and Kodagu, sparking debates over his tolerance versus tyranny.
In an epilogue to his new book Assassins and Templars, Steve Tibble says (or, perhaps, protests) that his book really has nothing to do with the video game “Assassin’s Creed”, that any similarity is not so much coincidence as common intellectual and cultural ancestry. Readers of a certain generation might entertain some skepticism, especially in light of Tibble’s colloquial (albeit steadfastly rigorous) approach to the subject. Tibble might nevertheless have been aware of some pop-culture competition for reader mind-space, for he has written a page-turner of a history.
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