“99 Nights in Logar” by Jamil Jan Kochai
Strongly influenced by One Thousand and One Nights, Jamil Jan Kochai’s new novel is a cornucopia of modern and ancient stories set in the war-torn heartlands of Afghanistan.
“Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power Book” by Sheila A Smith
Japan’s current defense policy is shaped by three principal factors: domestic politics, perceptions of external threats, and its alliance with the United States. In her new book Japan Rearmed, Sheila A Smith, a Japan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, meticulously explores the evolution of Japan’s military policy from the beginning of the Cold…
“A Path Twice Traveled: My Journey as a Historian of China” by Paul A Cohen
“I certainly was not born to history,” Paul Cohen tells us at the very beginning of his book; indeed he wasn’t. He didn’t want to follow his father’s men’s clothing trade, and gave up engineering after one year in university to study the humanities, and even then he did not concentrate on any one part…
“Bangkok Wakes to Rain” by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s story of Bangkok is the most complete and engrossing tale of this megacity of fifteen million souls ever portrayed in a single publication. His debut novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain is as much an ode to the metropolis’s extremes as it is to the wide-ranging and singular characters that animate its streets and…
“The Lives Before Us” by Juliet Conlin
Despite the not-entirely-rare memoirs, novels, and narratives about Jewish refugees in Shanghai during World War II, it remains a little-known corner of history. Juliet Conlin’s new novel tells a story of two of them.
“Voting as a Rite: A History of Elections in Modern China” by Joshua Hill
For those who wring their hands over unpredictable voting results—for a nation’s president or a potential split from a political and economic union—the fixed expectations of Chinese elections may be oddly calming. Joshua Hill’s new book, Voting as a Rite: A History of Elections in Modern China, offers a tour of Chinese elections going back…
“Last Days of the Mighty Mekong” by Brian Eyler
Brian Eyler isn’t a fan of dams, perhaps any of them, but at least not those that are, or may be, on the Mekong.
“My Museum” and “My City” by Joanne Liu
In the summer of 2016, Hong Kong illustrator Joanne Liu was in New York City with a friend. Together they visited some New York museums but Liu felt a bit intimidated by the experience: “We just thought there were a lot of things we didn’t understand. We didn’t know what was going on.”
“A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There” by Krishna Sobti
Krishna Sobti, the grande dame of Hindi literature (as she is often called in India), passed away in January this year. She was an unusual writer, writing as a woman and publishing some of her work under a masculine name. Her writing in Hindi is inflected with Urdu and Punjabi ways of speaking and makes…
“A Death in Hong Kong: The MacLennan Case of 1980 and the Suppression of a Scandal” by Nigel Collett
For decades, the Hong Kong Police has been known as “Asia’s finest”. Before the handover, the Royal Hong Kong Police (RHKP) helped Hong Kong become one of the safest cities in the world. But it wasn’t always this way. Back in the mid-1970s, corruption had become so serious that after several failed attempts, Hong Kong…
“Vestida de Nit”: Sílvia Pérez Cruz at the Hong Kong Arts Festival
Literature comes in many forms; sometimes it is sung.
“Hong Kong Noir”, edited by Jason Y Ng and Susan Blumberg-Kason
Since the cinema that served as modern Hong Kong’s introduction to the world was such a hodgepodge of triad gangsters, crooked cops, ghosts, prostitutes and clueless romantics—sometimes all in the same film—one should hardly be surprised when a literary anthology shows the same genre-busting proclivities. Hong Kong Noir, the latest in a lengthy list of…
“Mother Winter: A Memoir” by Sophia Shalmiyev
The daughter of a Jewish Azerbaijani father and a Russian mother, Sophia Shalmiyev grew up in 1980s Leningrad hearing her grandmother recite anti-Semitic jingles, ruffling Sophia’s hair as if this act of act of affection could erase the sting of her words.
“The Great Firewall of China How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet” by James Griffiths
Many potential readers of James Griffiths’s new book well have had direct experience of the “Great Firewall of China” of the title. But that doesn’t mean they won’t find the book useful. Griffiths stitches events and issues, most of which are—individually—reasonably well-known, into a coherent narrative. The result is a readable, well-documented history of the…
“The Antagonists” by Tina Biswas
Fans of political skulduggery will appreciate this satirical tale of double-dealing, media manipulation and murder among the ruling classes of West Bengal.
