Regardless of culture, mother-daughter relationships can be fraught and tensions incomprehensibly continue to be passed down generation after generation. Gish Jen addresses her own contentious relationship with her mother in her new novel, Bad Bad Girl, her tenth book and the first she’s devoted to her mother.
Category Archive: Reviews
Even the idlest stroller will be awestruck by the beauty of Cairo’s City of the Dead. Yet this gem of 14th and 15th century architecture, a Unesco World Heritage site, leaves the visitor wondering about the sultans, beys and princesses for whom these elaborate monuments were built. Stones can tell stories, but objects bring the past to life. The Louvre Abu Dhabi’s exhibition, with over 250 pieces, aims to provide a fuller sense of these patrons, the Mamluks: who were they and how did they see themselves?
Written in the cursive-like Nastaliq script, and in an adaptation of Perso-Arabic alphabet, Urdu has become caught in religious silos. It “looks” Islamic, and therefore, in popular imagination, belongs to just one community in the multilingual universe. Anthologies of Urdu literature—in Urdu and in translation, especially in English—seem to have perpetuated this simplistic narrative of Urdu equals Islam by only Muslim authors in their collections. With the anthology Whose Urdu Is It Anyway?, Rakhshanda Jalil attempts to bring diversity to the scene by including only non-Muslim writers.
If one ever forgets what poetry is for, this newly-released collection is a reminder of its ability to renew, sooth and provoke. Mirror is a translation of a lengthy posthumous selection of Chinese poet Zhang Zao’s lifelong opus.
Qing Yuan works in a morgue, cleaning bodies. He grew up in a cultured family before 1949, studying art and literature in university. Qing Yuan’s father owned a jewelry shop and got into trouble with the new government after he tried to hide a small amount of gold during the early days of nationalization. Qing Yuan was punished for his father’s capitalist ways and when Ruyan Meng’s novel opens in 1966, he’s been the morgue keeper of the title for sixteen years.
Ann YK Choi made a splash on the literary scene a decade ago with her debut novel, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, a coming of age story of a young Korean-Canadian who grew up in her family’s convenience store in 1980s Toronto. This book was a finalist for the Toronto Book Awards, among many accolades. With her new novel, All Things Under the Moon, Choi effortlessly switches genres from contemporary to historical fiction.
The term “Industrial Revolution” entered modern parlance in 1799, courtesy of the French diplomat Louis-Guillaume Otto. What began with incremental improvements in steam power and textiles would sweep the world, freeing societies from the Malthusian trap while upending the distribution of political power. But for all that epochal significance, scholars have never arrived at a consensus on why it began in Western Europe and not, say, East Asia. After reading Mehran Gul’s The New Geography of Innovation, one suspects that the present revolution in silicon and algorithms will also evade simple explanations.
Political memoirs or, worse, philosophical treatises by political leaders, are often books best avoided. Yet Anwar Ibrahim’s recent Rethinking Ourselves is nonetheless one the most erudite collection of essays out in this or any recent year.
There’s something about old Hong Kong and Shanghai that lend themselves to ghost stories and mysteries. They share a similar history during World War II as well as traditions like the Tomb Sweeping and Hungry Ghost Festivals that honour the dead. The two cities are also known for stately old colonial homes, many of which still remain today. After Kristen Loesch lived in Hong Kong 15-20 years ago, she learned of Dragon Lodge, an abandoned old home on the Peak rumored to be haunted, and formed the story that would become her new novel, The Hong Kong Widow, an engaging ghost story that alternates between wartime Shanghai, 1950s Hong Kong, and present-day US and Hong Kong. To add an extra touch to this chilling story, Hong Kong artist Jiksun Cheung’s illustrations are scattered throughout the story.
From a general historical perspective, the current confrontation between mainland China and Taiwan is not difficult to explain. By the end of the 19th century, Qing Dynasty was teetering on the brink of collapse. Territories were carved out and handed over to foreign colonizers after failed battles. Taiwan was ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895.
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