“The Lost Pianos of Siberia” by Sophy Roberts
Writers have, over the years, given many excuses for a trip to Siberia—tigers, stories, trains, shamanism, Jews, rivers, solitude, cycling—but the most unexpected must surely be “pianos”.
“Islamic Empires: The Cities that Shaped Civilization From Mecca to Dubai” by Justin Marozzi
Justin Marozzi starts his survey of Islamic civilization by noting that the Arab world hasn’t had the best of press lately. “Everywhere you look there’s chaos, fighting, bloodshed, dictatorship, corruption, injustice, unemployment,” a Tunisian friend of his tells him.
“Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink” by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
For those of us who live in Hong Kong, the past six-eight months have been a roller-coaster. The (it is almost now universally accepted) ill-advised extradition bill—the proximate cause of the discontent that has roiled the city—has been withdrawn, but too late to stem the tide of protest, which took on a momentum of its…
Letter from New York: “Romeo & Bernadette”
There is no earthly reason to write about the new off-Broadway musical Romeo & Bernadette except that it’s very clever. Mark Saltzman has repurposed some 300 hundred years of Italian song—Giordani through de Curtis with side trips via Rossini, Bellini, Leoncavallo, Cannio and Falvo—as songs and lyrics of a thoroughly modern (albeit 1960s-retro) musical.
“Shanghai 1935: An American lady’s account of the city and its high-society” by Ruth Day
In 1935, Ruth Day paid a six-week visit to her mother and step-father who were at that time living in Shanghai. When she returned, she published a short book on the trip. The book had a run of just 200 copies and seems to have quickly disappeared—but at least one copy found its way to…
“Winter in Sokcho” by Elisa Shua Dusapin
In the dead of winter, a Frenchman arrives at a small guest house in Sokcho where Franco-Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin’s narrator works in a dead-end job as receptionist and run-about. Sokcho is a nondescript seaside town not far from the North Korean border. In the summer, Sokcho is a beach resort, if not the…
Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Liang at Hong Kong’s City Hall
The first few weeks of January, falling as they do between the two New Years’, are culturally relatively quiet. The Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, now the Beare’s Premiere Music Festival, has long been one of the major events brightening this relatively uneventful period.
“Stories of the Sahara” by Sanmao
At first hearing, Stories of the Sahara sounds improbable: about a half-century ago, a young Chinese woman from Taiwan decamps to El Aaiún in the then Spanish Sahara.
“Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World” by Kris Lane
As China and the West look at decoupling, it’s worth remembering that the world has been through this several times since they first coupled three-quarters of the way through the 16th century. That’s when the Manila Galleon connected Asia and the Americas, a trade that was, to mix metaphors, oiled by silver.
“The Siberian Dilemma” by Martin Cruz Smith
If you’ve never met Arkady Renko, erstwhile Soviet and now Russian cop, his most recent set of cases, this time in Asia—well, Siberia, to be exact—is as good an opportunity as any to finally become acquainted.
“The Merry Widow”, Hong Kong, December 2019
If there is any work that typifies “Viennese operetta”—waltzes, romantic comedy, catchy tunes and a certain silliness—it is Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow.
In brief: 20th-century Italian Chamber Music, Hong Kong, 3 December 2019
“Prima la musica” (“The music comes first”) once said opera composer Antonio Salieri (at least in the title to one of his operas). Perhaps as a consequence, opera has provided, once the words are dispensed with, other composers with marvelous opportunities for transcriptions and adaptions.
“The Chronicles of Lord Asunaro” by Kanji Hanawa
The Chronicles of Lord Asunaro is a curious little volume. In length, perhaps 10,000 words, it is long for a short story but short for a novella. The protagonist, a minor feudal lord in late Tokugawa Japan, was an actual person (apparently: like much else here, it is hard to be sure), his life heavily…
“Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes”, edited by Susan Whitfield
Some books are next to impossible to review. Silk Roads is one: encyclopedic in scope and structure, made up of several dozen short essays by almost as many different authors, each lavishly illustrated with indescribable photos of objects and places.
“Lake Like a Mirror” by Ho Sok Fong
Surrealism is something of an outlier in mainstream English fiction, yet it seems to crop up with some frequency in contemporary Chinese-language literature, at least in those works that find themselves in English-translation. This penchant for surrealism can seem even more pronounced, or perhaps concentrated, in the wider Chinese world and diaspora: Dorothy Tse, Hon…
