Shanghailanders, the debut novel from Juli Min, starts at the end: Leo, a wealthy Shanghai businessman, sees his wife and daughters off at the airport as they travel to Boston. Everyone, it seems, is unhappy.
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Kashmir has always been the point of connection between South Asia, Central Asia and Xinjiang. Winding their way through the mighty Himalaya, Pamir and Karakoram Mountain ranges, traders, travelers and officials created a series of close historic economic, cultural and political ties that have bound the region together.
When we think of Nepal, we think of its high Himalayan mountains, or maybe the highlands of Kathmandu. But somewhere between a quarter and a third of the country is nothing like that: marshy, forested, malaria-infested swampland, along the southern border with India.
For much of the past three months, the northeastern Indian state of Manipur—nestled right up against the border with Myanmar—has been the site of a conflict between two groups: the majority Meiteis and the minority Kukis. The fighting—with scenes of brutal violence, looting of police stations, and burnt places of worship—even sparked a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
You would never associate tree climbing goats or Fengshui with Investment Banking… Banking with Chopsticks will change your mind about the world of finance. The book is a personal insight into the world of banking and various cultures, with a focus on China and Japan and a sense of humor. The book begins in London in 1986, the year of the Big Bang, and ends in Geneva with the latest financial crisis of 2008.
In 1945, researchers on a mission to Hiroshima with the United States Strategic Bombing Survey canvassed survivors of the nuclear attack. This marked the beginning of global efforts—by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other social scientists—to tackle the complex ways in which human minds were affected by the advent of the nuclear age. A trans-Pacific research network emerged that produced massive amounts of data about the dropping of the bomb and subsequent nuclear tests in and around the Pacific rim.
A Most Noble Life is the extraordinary story of Ashrafunnisa Begum, who was born in an obscure village in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, taught herself to read and write, in secret, against the wishes of her elders and prevailing norms, and went on to teach and inspire generations of young girls at the Victoria Girls’ School—the first school for girls in Lahore. Her unusual life was written about with great poignancy by Muhammadi Begum—the first woman to edit a journal in Urdu, and a prolific writer of fiction and poetry for adults and children, and instructional books for women during her brief life.
Landed is a collection of heartfelt stories about the transformative experience of immigration, funded by a Calgary Arts Development grant I was awarded earlier this year. Written by 37 women from 30 countries of origin, each story is a unique expression of the gritty choices and hard-won lessons to belong and become.
Predictions for the future of Southeast Asia on the whole follow two different narratives. On the one hand, ASEAN is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and forty years of interstate peace along with it. The region’s economy is growing at breakneck speed, led by countries like Vietnam and the Philippines. Yet, on the other hand, news reports are filled with stories about scandal and crisis, from Malaysia’s continuing 1MDB scandal, Rodrigo Duterte’s extrajudicial drug war, or the ethnic strife in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
It is a sultry early Autumn day in the central province of Hunan in China, half a century ago in 1967. In a small cluster of villages, remote from the main political centre in Beijing, life revolves around farming, tending animals, just making a basic living. But for a couple of weeks, from around the 20th of August, the market places, and the areas by the rivers and fields, are the scenes of a new kind of activity—the brutal slaughter by neighbors, relatives and friends of people from within their communities. The spate of daylight murder ends as abruptly as it had begun.
It is hard to exaggerate the force of Chinese journalist Tan Hecheng’s The Killing Wind. Tan, eerily, had visited the township of Daoxian—the focus of his study—only a few weeks after the murders had happened. As a young “sent down youth” then, in the early period of the Cultural Revolution, he had come to this area with a friend.
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