“Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road” by Kate Harris
So you’re planning a trip on the Silk Road. You’re looking for tips on what to take, routes, currencies, visas.
“A City Mismanaged: Hong Kong’s Struggle for Survival” by Leo F Goodstadt
A City Mismanaged is policy analysis as blood sport. Leo Goodstadt needs no introduction in Hong Kong circles; those outside might need to know that he was head of the pre-Handover Hong Kong government’s Central Policy Unit from 1989-1997. He has penned a no-holds-barred smackdown of the four post-colonial Hong Kong administrations.
“Journey to the West: He Hui, a Chinese Soprano in the World of Italian Opera” by Melanie Ho
Opera travels well. Its stories are the stories of our collective humanity—love, loss, revenge, strife, rebellion, rejuvenation, absurdity, tragedy—and its archetypes not only define cultures but also connect them. In many respects, we can no longer speak in essentializing ways about Western opera or Chinese opera, but rather must address the world of opera and…
“A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada” by Edyta M Bojanowska
Anton Chekhov, it appears, was not the first Russian literary luminary to visit Hong Kong. Chekhov had stopped off in October 1890 and wrote about its “wonderful bay”. English-language literature had to wait until Somerset Maugham came through more than a quarter-century later. But Chekhov was beaten to the punch by Ivan Goncharov who stopped…
Production line China fiction: two new novels
For most people in the West, the relationship with China is one based on products—clothes, shoes, mobile phones—or, should the rumbling trade war materialize, the lack of them. But the people who toil away making these products are hardly ever brought into focus.
“Moon Brow” by Shahriar Mandanipour
Sex and death, the twin yet conflicting human compulsions identified by Freud, abound in this vivid and sensual epic of love and loss set against the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
“The South China Sea Disputes: Historical, Geopolitical and Legal Studies” edited by Tsu-Sung Hsieh
This latest volume in the Series on Contemporary China published by World Scientific looks at the historical, geopolitical, and legal aspects of the ongoing disputes over the South China Sea and its islands, reefs, and rocks. Edited by Tsu-sung Hsieh, a retired Taiwanese navy captain and professor at the Ming Chuan University School of Law…
“Against Walls” by Bryn Hammond
Expect no easy ride. Author Bryn Hammond evidently thinks that the best way to teach you swimming is to throw you into the deep end. But if you don’t drown instantly, and if you brace yourself through the first 10-20 pages of Against Walls, there is a good chance that you’ll stay in the magic…
“The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan” by Sam Kleiner
The Second World War actually began on 7 July 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Beijing, when Imperial Japanese troops clashed with Nationalist Chinese forces. Japan had annexed Manchuria in 1931, but Chinese forces did not fight back then; instead, China’s leaders appealed in vain to the League of Nations. Six years later,…
“High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia” by Will Doig
China has developed a reputation for confounding naysayers. Will Doig starts High-Speed Empire with an anecdote of the World Bank castigating Shanghai in 1991 for deciding to build a Metro; the suggestion was that maybe focusing on infrastructure for bicycles might be a better use of resources.
“Japan, South Korea, and the United States Nuclear Umbrella: Deterrence After the Cold War” by Terence Roehrig
The principal argument of Terence Roehrig’s new book is that the United States will not and should not use nuclear weapons to defend Japan or South Korea. The US nuclear umbrella, he contends, has been little more than a bluff because the threat to use nuclear weapons, even in response to a nuclear attack, is…
“The History of Central Asia (vol 4): The Age of Decline and Revival” by Christoph Baumer
It’s pretty hard to compete with the invention of the chariot, the Silk Road, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, so Christoph Baumer’s fourth and presumably final volume in his magisterial history of Central Asia is something of a mopping up operation.
“Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling” by Arshia Sattar and illustrated by Sonali Zohra
The ancient Indian epics carry a kind of authority different from their Western equivalents. The Indian audience has been ready to stay invested in the story for longer, unto the present times. The story of Rama is performed every year in India before the Hindu festivals of Dussehra and Diwali celebrated to mark, respectively, Rama’s…
“In Search of the Phoenicians” by Josephine Quinn
There were no Phoenicians, so we aren’t going to find them. Simply put, that is Josephine Quinn’s thesis in this pioneering study.
“Petulia’s Rouge Tin” by Su Tong
Contemporary Chinese literature can sometimes be a bit of a struggle, whether due to heavy doses of politics or surrealism; the subject might be obscure or the author self-consciously literary. However worthy these works may be, it comes as something of a relief, then, that Su Tong—of Raise the Red Lantern fame—stuck to good, old-fashioned…
