“Later Chinese Bronzes for the Scholar’s Studio” by Paul Bromberg
Most people “collect” stuff, but Paul Bromberg is a “collector”, the difference being that he proceeds with intent and purpose, focusing on a relatively narrow group of objects.
“Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China” by Robert J Antony
Pirates and piracy seem to be about as universal as death and taxes, and Chinese and Western piracy bear much in common, from violence and hardship, to oppression from the authorities as both cause and consequence, as well as a certain amount of popular romanticism. In Outlaws of the Sea, Robert J Antony provides an…
“An Ordinary Tale About Women and Other Stories” by Fatimah Busu
The modern classics of Southeast Asian literature, with the singular exception of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, largely remain a blank spot on the English-language literary map. Thank goodness, then, that Penguin Southeast Asia has in recent years published translations from, for example, Vietnamese and Tagalog; Pauline Fan’s recent translation of a collection of Malay short fiction…
Opera in brief: Puccini’s “Il trittico” at Hong Kong City Hall, 13-15 December 2024
Hong Kong rounded out the Puccini centenary year with Musica Viva’s new production of Il Trittico (“The Triptych”), a trio of one-act operas. Each is sufficient in itself, yet the whole magically becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Il tabarro (“The Cloak”) leads off with tragic melodrama, Suor Angelica is both spiritual and…
Podcast review: “The Mongols: Terror of the Steppe” from the “Fall of Civilizations” podcast
Books can be the subjects of podcasts, podcasts can spawn books, but only rarely does a podcast itself rise to be a possible stand-in for a book. Paul Cooper’s recent two-part podcast “The Mongols: Terror of the Steppe” is one of these.
“I’ll Have It Here: Poems” by Jeet Thayil
As an award-winning novelist, Jeet Thayil may need little introduction, but given that I’ll Have It Here is his first collection in a decade and a half, some readers may need some reminding that he is also an accomplished poet.
“Steamships across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914” by Ruth Mandujano López
Ruth Mandujano López starts her book Steamships across the Pacific with, as seems almost de rigueur now for almost any book about Latin American-Asian relations, with the history of the Manila Galleon, but for her, this is a point of comparison and departure.
“Behind the Painting” by Siburapha
Titles from the venerable Penguin Classics imprint are usually books one knows one should have read even if one hasn’t (yet): known unknowns, as the famous saying goes. Behind the Painting by Thai author Siburapha is, even for the well-read anglophone consumer of literature, likely to qualify as an unknown unknown. First published 1937, this…
“Fashion and the Floating World: Japanese ukiyo-e Prints” by Anna Jackson and Masami Yamada
Japanese woodblock prints of the 18th and 19th centuries are, one comes to realize, one of the earliest example of mass commercial art, at least purely secular art, and one that still resonates with modern sensibilities. As testament to their volume, Britain’s Victoria & Albert Museum has, quite literally, tens of thousands of prints, a…
“The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization” by Juan José Rivas Moreno
Much has already been written about the Manila Galleon, the system of annual commercial sailings between Manila and Acapulco that dominated trans-Pacific trade for two and a half centuries from the latter part of the 16th-century until the early 19th, a development which is often taken to mark the beginning of “globalization”. Juan José Rivas…
“Great Game On” by Geoff Raby
At a time when much of what passes for international commentary has the depth and nuance of a tweet, Geoff Raby’s Great Game On is something of a relief. The former Australian Ambassador to China keeps his politics largely to himself, but doesn’t have much time for mainstream Western (read “American” for the most part)…
“Eclipse” by Keiichiro Hirano
Is it a commendation or criticism of the author or translators that one would never have imagined, had one not already known, that Keiichiro Hirano’s Eclipse was originally written in Japanese for a Japanese readership? Set in late 15th-century France and deeply permeated with Christian theology and late medieval philosophy, Eclipse evokes nothing as much…
“Lakshmi’s Secret Diary” by Ari Gautier
The ever-increasing amount of Indian fiction appearing in English translation has been one of the most striking publishing phenomena of the past two decades. But Lakshmi’s Secret Diary comes to us not via Bengali, Hindi or Tamil, but French. That author Ari Gautier hails from Pondicherry, the capital of the erstwhile French territory in India,…
“The Origins of Chinese Civilisation” at the Hong Kong Palace Museum
The recently-opened exhibition at Hong Kong’s Palace Museum, “The Origins of Chinese Civilisation”, has a serious purpose, but one suspects that most visitors focus on the objects, as well they might.
“Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000-Year History of Iraq” by Bartle Bull
Bartle Bull’s objective in the very readable Land Between the Rivers is to demonstrate that the modern country of Iraq is not a mere colonial creation but rather has a historical reality going back millennia.
