Kyokutei Bakin’s Nansō Satomi Hakkenden is one of the monuments of Japanese literature. This multigenerational samurai saga was one of the most popular and influential books of the 19th century and has been adapted many times into film, television, fiction, and comics.
“For the first time in my life, I experienced the terror of international limbo, unable to enter any country. What would happen to me? Would I be trapped forever in an airport?” Japan’s 1972 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Author Chen Tienshi Lara was one of…
It’s perhaps one of history’s funny accidents that relations between the U.S. and Russia were changed not by one, but two, George Kennans. Decades before George F. Kennan wrote his famous Long Telegram that set the tone for the Cold War, his predecessor was exploring Russia’s Far East on a quest to investigate the then-Russian…
Who are the Bene Israel Jews of India? Where did they come from? How did they survive in India? Sweet Malida is a moving, multi-layered, richly sensory and informative collection of poems and short prose inspired by this ancient community to which the poet herself belongs.
The opening story of Eternal Summer of My Homeland, the debut story collection from Singaporean author Agnes Chew, is about grief. Hui Shan loses her mother right before the birth of her first child—and gradually cuts her father out of her life after he refuses to do the traditional things one does to commemorate the…
Since the early 1950s, over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted in the United States, primarily by white families. Korean adoptees figure in twenty-five percent of US transnational adoptions and are the largest group of transracial adoptees currently in adulthood. Despite being legally adopted, Korean adoptees’ position as family members did not automatically ensure legal,…
Thailand is known internationally as a popular sex tourism destination. Yet, despite its size and reputation, remarkably little research has focused on the country’s sex industry over the past two decades. Based on original ethnographic data and other sources, Sex Tourism in Thailand is an expansive yet nuanced study of diverse sex markets and their…
Ayurveda enjoys a growing global appeal, and is often touted as ‘true’ and ‘time-tested’ by contemporary political actors, governments, social groups, practitioners and NGOs in India. With “indigenous” healing systems enjoying increasing state support today, an examination of the socio-political aspects of medicine, in particular Ayurveda, and its role in nation-building is critically important.
In this groundbreaking book, Sherali Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim scholars imagined and contested the possibilities and dangers of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. He argues that often what was at stake in Muslim scholarly discourse and debates on this subject were unresolved tensions and fissures over the place…
A 2023 round-up of reviews of works in translation from Japanese, Korean and Chinese through Turkic and Spanish: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, classics and folk-tales.
The trauma of Partition is an indelible part of the collective memory of the citizens of India and Pakistan and, later, Bangladesh. With over 15 million displaced and several million dead on both sides of the Radcliffe Line, this massive exodus remains forever a black mark in history. Partition and its aftermath have been central…
Symbols of Substance is a groundbreaking analysis of the political culture and political economy of the small Nayaka states that emerged and flourished in the Tamil country in the 16th and 1th centuries.
Another bumper year of podcasts. Here is a selection of a dozen highlights from short stories and pop-classics in translation to biography, history, society and the arts.
Mountain Songs embodies the intersecting narratives of migration and how it shapes one’s identity.
Translations remained strong in this year’s (as always, subjective) list of books we thought worthy of particular mention, ranging from Chinese, Korean and Japanese, through Tagalog, Hindi, Turkish, French and Spanish and including autobiography, poetry and graphic novels as well as fiction. Non-fiction ranges from history and biography to art and culture.