“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…
“North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths” by Andray Abrahamian
The traditional nursery rhyme goes: Two little Soldier boys playing with a gun; One shot the other and then there was One. One little Soldier boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none. Pyongyang and Naypyidaw were, Andray Abrahamian claims, the last of the pariah states.
“America Is Not the Heart” by Elaine Castillo
There is much more than the average “Asian expatriate in the US” story to be found in the debut novel by Elaine Castillo. America Is Not the Heart offers some genuine insights into love, life and what constitutes a home as well as an absorbing family saga set between the Philippines and the Bay area…
“Tsunami” by Anatoly Kurchatkin
Moscow’s Red Square and Bangkok’s Imperial Queen’s Park wouldn’t seem to have much in common but for the main characters in Anatoly Kurchatkin’s enjoyable and fascinating novel Tsunami, translated by Arch Tait from the original Russian, there is much that unites these disparate locales.
“Old Hong Kong Photos and the Tales They Tell” by David Bellis
To take a photograph, Susan Sontag tells us, “is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power.” A photograph also preserves evidence and exposes the human condition, which the viewer then appropriates. Old photographs preserve worlds that are gone, but…
“Lord of Formosa” by Joyce Bergvelt
Despite, or perhaps because of, its relatively small size, Taiwan has had a turbulent and diverse history that has seen it endure dictatorship during the 20th century, Japanese colonization, and being a minor part of the Qing Dynasty. But before all this, the island, then known as Formosa, was the prize of a mighty struggle…
