Due, one presumes, to the success of his first photo-album matching images of yesteryear with their current appearance, Macau-based photographer Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro has returned with an encore.
Category Archive: Non-Fiction
Back in the (pre-EU) day, the American Government and US corporations would place Greece into a Middle Eastern or Near Eastern department; I seem to recall my 1980s-era employer doing so, to the (mild) annoyance of its Greek distributor. Europe was more tightly-defined in those days.
A recent report comparing stock market returns from 1995 to 2025 across 14 major countries found that India boasted the highest annualized returns … while also displaying the greatest volatility. Anyone hoping to profit from that tremendous but erratic growth would do well to peruse Running Behind Lakshmi. Adil Rustomjee’s indulgent editors allowed him to publish a book that is equal parts history, textbook, and personal musing. Like India itself, the work is enormous, variegated, occasionally exasperating and utterly unique.
In Egypt’s eastern province, the annual Arabian Horse Festival celebrates the deep historical connection between the province, the Arabian horse, and the settlement of Bedouin tribes in Egypt during the 7th century. Except that, according to Yossef Rapoport’s new book, Becoming Arab, this perceived connection doesn’t represent a historical event, but rather a lengthy process of ethnogenesis. For the conquering Arab armies settled in the cities of Egypt, not in the countryside, where Islam remained a minority religion for centuries. Yet today, many Egyptians consider themselves scions of ancient Arab tribes, just as they see their horses as pure blood Arabs. How and when did this Arab identity take hold in Egypt?
You come across them in used book stores, with their fading, cloth covers, their saccharine prose, with black and white photos of palaces and tennis courts. These are the memoirs of princesses from the house of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, of Zog of Albania, or the Dogras of Kashmir. It’s easy to forget that behind the overthrow of these sad, sentimental royal exiles, major political and social forces were at work: Imran Mulla’s The Indian Caliphate takes what would otherwise have been a trite tale of dethroned dynasties and brings to life the passions and controversies that stirred the early 20th century, and which have not really calmed down even in our own.
Best-known for her award-winning novels, Anuradha Roy’s first work of non-fiction Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya, is a well-written book that goes beyond the boundaries of memoir and travelogue to examine the shifting life of a Himalayan valley through both anthropological and social lenses. The author and her partner retreat from the cacophony of city life, seeking solace and self-discovery in the mountains. Their decision to leave the freneticism of Delhi is also an act of resistance—an attempt to step away from an “externally moulded cultural change” and to understand how identity transforms in a vastly different landscape.
Ringed by a snow-coated massif, the Dal Lake shimmers under the bright sun as the shikara canoes skim over its iridescent waters: this snapshot of Srinagar is almost ubiquitous on the Internet. Millions of vacationers who visit this place every year to unwind probably imagine this city as little more than a summer retreat.
In few countries is the contrast between buried riches and visible squalor as great as in Afghanistan. Ancient towns like Balkh and Ghazna present scenes of desolation which belie the wonderful objects and architectural elements that archaeologists have recovered from them. Other rich sites, like Ai Khanum, lie below the surface of a featureless plain. Perhaps only Herat recalls to visitors the storied riches of this country, with its grandiose mosque and Sufi shrines. It is in a way surprising that Afghanistan attracted so many archaeological missions, though after the fact they were well rewarded for their efforts. In Ancient Civilizations of Afghanistan, Warwick Ball recounts how Afghanistan has historically been the center of many civilizations, and not the isolated, peripheral land it has become.
India’s development story has been told many times, but A Sixth of Humanity makes a compelling case that the familiar narratives no longer suffice. Authors Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian seek to reinterpret India’s extraordinary, idiosyncratic, and often paradoxical economic journey over a 75-year arc as a single, interconnected developmental experiment whose successes and failures were not accidental, but the product of several political, social, and institutional elements.
Of all the examples of Cool Japan’s global reach—from sushi to Hello Kitty to anime and manga—perhaps the most iconic of all is Hokusai’s print, The Great Wave. The huge curving wave has taken on a life of its own, reproduced and recreated on coffee mugs and tea towels and across the internet in the myriad ways that mark 21st-century creativity. However, as is well known, the woodblock print was one of a collection of 36 studies not of the sea, but of Mount Fuji. Andrew Bernstein follows Hokusai by placing the mountain right at the center of his new book, surrounded this time by all of Japan: religion, literature, culture, hunting, gathering, politics and even diplomacy.
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