Reviews

Non-Fiction Reviews
“The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village” by Shrabani Basu
5 July 2021
Injustice produces indignation at those responsible for it. Shrabani Basu’s The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer is filled with indignation as it tells the story of the investigation, prosecution, conviction, and partial pardon of George Edalji, a British lawyer of Indian descent who served three years in prison for crimes (mutilating animals and sending threatening…
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Fiction Reviews
“The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu” by Tom Lin
4 July 202122 September 2021
Anti-miscegenation laws—laws prohibiting interracial marriage and relationships—plagued the United States and were a part of the American fabric for centuries, some lasting until the 1960s. Tom Lin frames his debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, around this issue as the eponymous protagonist of the story was married to a white woman until her…
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Fiction Reviews
“One Hundred Days” by Alice Pung
3 July 20213 February 2022
When 16-year-old Karuna becomes pregnant, Karuna’s mother decides to lock her daughter inside their fourteenth-story public housing flat as a means to keep her safe. Karuna, who has spent years trying to escape her mother, now finds herself with her mother as her only company.
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan” by Kathryn Babayan
2 July 20216 July 2021
They gaze at you, the fashionably-attired youths of Esfahan, from a distance of 300 years. Swaying like cypress trees, their tresses floating in the air like clouds, their faces surrounded by peach fuzz, they smile like the Gioconda and with more mystery. Who are these young men and what do they say to the viewers?…
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Fiction Reviews
“Shoko’s Smile: Stories” by Choi Eunyoung
1 July 20216 July 2021
Choi Eunyong’s best-selling Shoko’s Smile has earned her comparisons to novelists such as Sally Rooney and Marilynne Robinson for the collection’s carefully crafted portraits of women’s relationships and intimacies formed and dissolved over time.
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Returning Southeast Asia’s Past: Objects, Museums and Restitution” edited by Louise Tyhacott and Panggah Ardiyansyah
30 June 2021
The repercussions of Western imperialism have impacted modern society in countless ways. From politics to language to art, is it clear that people are still grappling with how to address the conflicts stemming from increased globalization and colonialism (primarily that of Europeans and Americans) from the 16th century onwards.
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva” by Shantideva and “Finding the Heart Sutra” by Alex Kerr
29 June 202129 June 2021
Here are two indispensable and beautifully-written guidebooks designed to lead readers through essential Buddhist thought. One is an ancient guide in verse by the western Indian sage Shantideva (c 685-763) to becoming a bodhisattva, someone who seeks enlightenment in order to pass it on to everyone else. The other is a modern bilingual guide by…
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Fiction Reviews
“Lady Joker” by Kaoru Takamura
28 June 2021
Among the most unsettling words that can come at the end of a 600-page procedural crime thriller are: “End of Volume One”.
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Hisila: From Revolutionary to First Lady” by Hisila Yami
27 June 202127 June 2021
While in the mid 1990s, with China rapidly embracing capitalism, a Maoist insurgency may have seemed an incongruous throwback to the numerous proxy conflicts that had raged throughout the Cold War. Yet in Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had never been more relevant.
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Fiction Reviews
“The Membranes” by Chi Ta-wei
26 June 202127 June 2021
People worried about the end of the world during the 1990s. The end of the millennium provided the perfect milestone for the superstitiously-minded, with some becoming convinced that midnight on 31st December, 1999 would not ring in the changes, but rather the apocalypse.
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Fiction Reviews
“Folklorn” by Angela Mi Young Hur
25 June 202125 June 2021
In Angela Mi Young Hur’s new novel, Folklorn, she writes about a “Korean American Cali-Gothic” family that tackles family trauma going back to the Korean War. The story is a Korean-American immigrant struggle story, yes, but more than that most of it atypically takes place in Sweden, where Hur lives with her Swedish physicist husband…
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Young Readers Reviews
“Samira Surfs” by Rukhsanna Guidroz
22 June 202122 June 2021
Eleven-year-old Samira wants to show her family and the world what she can do: she can learn to read English, she can contribute to her family’s earnings and she can learn to surf. Forced to flee their village in Burma, Samira, her father, mother and older brother are Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar. Rukhsanna…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China’s Capitalist Ascent” by Jason M Kelly
21 June 202122 June 2021
The question of how a state committed to Communism became the world’s biggest trading nation in markets dominated largely by capitalist countries, controlling industries and setting prices, has long been puzzling. Author Jason M Kelly, in Market Maoists, provides a sober, detailed account of the way modern China came to see that global trade could…
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Young Readers Reviews
“The Minamata Story: An EcoTragedy” by Sean Michael Wilson
20 June 202120 June 2021
In the mid-1950s, strange symptoms swept through Minamata in Kyushu, the southernmost island in Japan. Fish died, cats became manic, and children started developing neurological issues like trouble speaking and walking. It all originated with the Chissa chemical factory and its waste disposal into the surrounding waters. Sean Michael Wilson and Akiko Shimojima’s comic, The…
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Fiction Reviews
“Let Us Look Elsewhere And Other Stories” by Mona Dash
19 June 2021
Prepare to be annoyed, Mona Dash warns the reader on the first page of her debut collection of stories. Those expecting to find tales of saris and jasmine will be disappointed, she says. Instead, the reader should prepare for stories which have not been told before: the voices traditionally marginalized by those belonging to the…
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