Vikas Swarup’s new novel, The Girl With the Seven Lives, opens with its main character Devi locked in a room, forced to retell her life’s story. Or, rather, her life’s stories–starting in the slums of Delhi, Devi reinvents herself time-and-time-again, with a new name and a new backstory, as she tries to carve a niche for herself in Indian society—only to be knocked back down, and be forced to start anew, with a new name.
Set in the early to mid-19th century in British-occupied India, Sayam Bandyopadhyay’s Carnival, at the outset, focuses on a middle-aged recluse living in Calcutta. Despite becoming a landowner at his father’s death, Rajaram Deb prefers a monotonous life confined to the walls of his bedroom—often at the cost of his responsibilities—barring rare moments of socializing. This self-imposed seclusion is made all the more notable by the initial sparks of public uprisings in the world beyond those walls, culminating in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
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 slim novel is one of Thailand’s best-known modern classics, has been adapted to film twice (as well as three stage musicals), and is a common set text in Thai secondary schools. Yet it is surely largely unknown outside Thailand.
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 collection which began with an acquisition from the 1886 Exposition Universelle in Paris and rounded out, if that’s the word, with a purchase in 1886 (“at the height of Japonisme”) of more than 12,000 from the London-based Asian art dealer, SM Franck & Sons. Fortunately, this volume, which features prints from the collection, also testifies to their aesthetics and long-lasting appeal.
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 Moreno reviews much of that as background, but unlike perhaps any other book on the subject to date, he turns his gaze to what was going on in Manila itself.
Whether it’s in commerce or conflict, today’s world pays rapt attention to the Persian Gulf. But the centrality of the Gulf to world history stretches far beyond the oil age—its ancient ports created the first proper trading system and the launching point for the spread of global Islam.
Nishant Upadhyay unravels Indian diasporic complicity in its ongoing colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples, lands, and nations in Canada. Upadhyay examines the interwoven and simultaneous areas of dominant Indian caste complicity in processes of settler colonialism, antiblackness, capitalism, brahminical supremacy, Hindu nationalism, and heteropatriarchy.
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) views, which he finds simplistic.
The Sassoon family was and remains legendary in global business and social history, with Victor Sassoon as its most iconic figure. He embodied the spirit of the cosmopolitan elite in the early 20th century, maintaining residences and businesses across the major financial centers of his time, dividing his life between Bombay, London, and Shanghai. As a financier, he operated worldwide, skillfully navigating the complex networks of empire and commerce that defined his era.
In Rio Shimamoto’s prize-winning novel First Love, a young woman kills her father. Her legal defence team must comb through the past and present, exploring her platonic, sexual, and romantic relationships to find a motive for murder. Though the novel begins as a crime thriller, it’s a genre-bending story that transforms into a romance, murder mystery, and, finally, a courtroom drama. First published in Japanese to critical and commercial acclaim—spawning a film adaptation—the novel is now available to the wider world through Louise Heal Kawai’s translation.
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