“Shadowless” by Hasan Ali Toptaş
The misdirection starts with the novel’s cover. Hasan Ali Toptas’s Shadowless is, in spite of its title, full of shadows.
“Unlocking the World’s Largest E-market: A Guide To Selling on Chinese Social Media” by Ashley Galina Dudarenok
There is an old saw about advertising that only half of it works, but one never knows which half. And one suspects that despite all the data gathered and statistics generated, the online counterpart remains more art than science. Digital marketing involves navigating, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, a number of known unknowns: things…
“Rainbirds” by Clarissa Goenawan
In 2015, Indonesian-born Singaporean author Clarissa Goenawan won the prestigious Bath Novel Award for unpublished and self-published novelists for her novel Rainbirds, which—some two years later—is now seeing the light of day.
“Malay Sketches” by Alfian Sa’at
Exploring identity in a multi-ethnic community through fiction can be a sensitive subject. The importance people place on identity is often a prickly topic these days—especially in multi-religious, multiracial communities like that of Singapore’s five and a half million citizens. In November 2017, the Singaporean Institute of Policy Studies presented evidence that for the first…
“Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century” by Richard McGregor
If you go into most bookshops in the States for example, there’s a cottage industry of books on the US and China, the US and the Middle East, you go to the UK, there’s a sort of similar cottage industry of books on the UK and France, and France and Germany. But there’s very little…
“Chinese Lessons: An American mother teaches her children how to be Chinese in China” by Patti Waldmeir
Contrary to popular belief, it is not, nor has it been, easy to adopt a child from China. Babies do not exit the country like cheap electronics and fast fashion. But there was one period when the doors were slightly ajar. It was during this period that Patti Waldmeir was able to adopt two baby…
“Memories of Fire” by Ashok Chopra
There is nostalgia for a gentler time as well as bloody depictions of real-life historical events in this genre-crossing work by author and publishing stalwart Ashok Chopra.
“Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China’s Rise” by Sebastian Heilmann
Sebastian Heilmann brings what is, for English-speaking readers, a somewhat rare European—or perhaps more precisely, German—perspective to the question of “China’s rise”, a term now almost de rigueur.
“Great Powers, Grand Strategies: The New Game in the South China Sea”, edited by Anders Corr
The South China Sea, notes Bernard Cole, a former US Navy captain who also taught maritime strategy at the National War College, covers four million square kilometers, has significant energy resources, and contains trade arteries through which one-third of the world’s commerce transits. Its geographic location astride the Southeast Asian littoral makes it the maritime…
“The Imam of Tawi-Tawi” by Ian Hamilton
Canada’s answer to—whom? Jason Bourne?—is a lesbian forensic accountant of Chinese extraction by the name of Ava Lee. But in The Imam of Tawi-Tawi, her tenth outing, Ava isn’t this time tracking down missing millions but has instead been sucked into the global “War on Terror”.
“By More Than Providence: Grand strategy and American power in the Asia Pacific since 1783” by Michael J Green
Americans have been present in the Pacific since the dawn of the Republic. At the time of George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, the country consisted of just 13 states huddled along the Atlantic seaboard, but in the geography of sail navigation Boston and New York were just as close to China as were London, Liverpool,…
“Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone” by Richard Lloyd Parry
The tsunami in question is of course the one generated by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake—the one which destroyed 650km of Japan’s coastline, killed about 18,500 and swamped the Fukushima power station. It was a disaster by any standard. But Parry has a rather different take. He emphasizes how well-prepared Japan was, and he certainly makes…
“White Chrysanthemum” by Mary Lynn Bracht
White Chrysanthemum memorializes Korean comfort women—women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese occupying forces during World War Two. In her debut novel, London-based Korean-American writer Mary Lynn Bracht explores the effects of these women’s abductions on their families and on wider society, and celebrates the power of women to survive horrific circumstances.
“Asia Betrayed: How Churchill Sacrificed The Far East to Save England” by John Bell Smithback
In his new book Asia Betrayed, John Bell Smithback sets out to prove that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (with the connivance of US President Franklin Roosevelt) through treachery and deceit lured the Japanese militarists to attack and invade British, Dutch and American possessions in the Far East so that the United States could become…
“Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit: An Anthology” by R Parthasarathy
The West tends to think and speak of ancient India as a spiritual lot, as a place and time which gives extraordinary importance to religion, and other dimensions of otherworldliness. The poet R Parthasarthy goes to the texts, different from the usual epics, that engage with love in all its corporeality.
