“Lady Joker” by Kaoru Takamura
Among the most unsettling words that can come at the end of a 600-page procedural crime thriller are: “End of Volume One”.
“Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through its Languages” by Peggy Mohan
Whether or not an explicit counter to current attempts to define a Hindu nationalist version of Indian identity, recent books for the general reader that present a nuanced multi-millennium, multi-everything story of Indian history are a welcome trend. While Tony Joseph deployed recent genetics research in Early Indians: The Story Of Our Ancestors And Where…
“We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin” by Chris Miller
The papers are currently full of articles and commentary on the ever-closer relationship between China and Russia, of their compatible economies, state visits, joint projects, shared geopolitical interests and camaraderie between their leaders.
“Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present” by Adeeb Khalid
The cover of Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present, with its photo of the massive walls of the Ark Fortress in Bukhara, is something of a bait and switch. The book flies through that period implied by picture: the “imperial conquests” of the subtitle are not those of Genghis…
“North Korea: Like Nowhere Else” by Lindsey Miller
Lindsey Miller spent two years in North Korea from 2017 to 2019 when her husband was posted to the British Embassy in Pyongyang. Miller (some research reveals) has a career of her own (she is currently musical director at the Royal Shakespeare Company) and finding herself (one supposes) somewhat at loose ends as a diplomatic…
“Carmen” redux: Opera Hong Kong, May 2021
When Micaëla comes on Act III, looking for the estranged Don José at the smugglers’ camp, she sings that Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante—“I tell myself that nothing will frighten me”. One could sense, in this, its first full-staged production in eighteen months, Opera Hong Kong telling itself much the same thing.
“Winter Pasture: One Woman’s Journey with China’s Kazakh Herders” by Li Juan
One can forget, when reading this gentle translation, that Li Juan’s account of her time with nomadic Kahakh herders in China’s Altay prefecture, was not written for us, the anglophone audience. Not only was Winter Pasture written in Chinese for a Chinese readership, it was a critical and commercial success. It’s easy to see why.
“Turkish Kaleidoscope” by Jenny White
Academic texts don’t usually manifest themselves as graphic novels.
Opera in Brief: Musica Viva’s “Carmen”, Hong Kong, April 2021
In a series of matinees ending today, Hong Kong’s Musica Viva presented George Bizet’s Carmen to audiences of secondary school students for whom this was the likely the first (Western) opera performance most had ever attended.
“One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World” by Eyck Freymann
Eyck Freymann begins his recent book by asking “What is One Belt One Road?” It’s a deceptively straightforward question, for the answer depends greatly on who’s doing the asking and why. Freyman poses the question on behalf of Americans and, in particular, American policy-makers.
“Person of Korea”, story by Paul Yoon
A short story is an unlikely review subject, but “Person of Korea” has several things going for it: first, it’s by Paul Yoon and in its detached observational style is illustrative of the author’s other work. Second, it’s set among the Korean diaspora in the Russia Far East; although the Russian Far East has begun…
“The Karakoram: Ice Mountains of Pakistan” by Colin Prior
The Karakoram Mountains, located for the most part in north-eastern Pakistan, contains four of the world’s fourteen 8000m peaks and four of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Photographer Colin Prior has been “fascinated” by the Karakoram for the better part of a half-century, and traveling there for a quarter-century, and it shows.
“Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China” by Jin Xu
It is not unusual for journalists from leading publications to turn their hand to books, but it is less usual for such books to have started off in Chinese. Jin Xu is senior editor and chief financial commentator at the Financial Times Chinese and her 2017 monetary history of China, Empire of Silver, has just…
“Indians: A Brief History of A Civilization” by Namit Arora
Namit Arora’s Indians is, this non-Indian guesses, likely to be read somewhat differently depending on whether or not one is included in the title. For those who aren’t, this is a readable and personable if perhaps idiosyncratic history structured as a travelogue.
Mozart in maschera: the HKAPA’s “Idomeneo”, March 2021
The most notable thing about the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts’s current run of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Idomeneo is that it is happening at all, a socially-distanced audience and performers all in masks (the medical rather than commedia dell’arte kind) being concessions to the situation.
