Genghis Khan established the greatest land empire ever known. His heirs saw to it that his accomplishments be remembered in a number of now classic works, like the Secret Histories of the Mongols, the Compendium of Histories by Rashiduddin, and Juvayni’s History of the World Conqueror. But souvenirs of Genghis Khan also survived in folk tales of the Tatar peoples, where they were transformed for cultural and political purposes, as shown in Mária Ivanics’s masterful editing of The Činggis Legend.
In August, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to complain about how US regulations are holding local sunscreens back compared to the rest of the world. And while she didn’t name any specific country, the video featured headlines that did name one nation: South Korea. On social media, Korean cosmetics are now viewed as the world’s best.
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.
It can be hard to imagine now, but there was a time, about 150 years ago, when Americans had a favorable and amicable view of Russia, “a ‘distant friend’” of the United States, a colorful but mysterious land filled with tragically romantic characters,” as Gregory Wallance writes in Into Siberia, his engrossing account of, as the subtitle has it, “George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia”.
The Grip of Change is the English translation of Pazhaiyana Kazhithalum, the first full-length novel by P Sivakami, an important Tamil writer. This translation also features Asiriyar Kurippu, the sequel in which Sivakami revisits her work.
At last someone has found a practical application for virtual reality. Brian Kwok teaches design at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University and he has been studying Hong Kong’s neon signs and the culture that surrounds them. It has convinced him that they should be preserved. But how? Kwok has a really difficult row to hoe, and he knows it full well.
Kurdistan + 100 poses a question to contemporary Kurdish writers: Might the Kurds one day have a country to call their own? With 13 stories all set in the year 2046—exactly a century after the first glimmer of Kurdish independence, the short-lived Republic of Mahabad—this book offers a space for new expressions and new possibilities in the ongoing struggle for self-determination.
Eleven-year-old Zadie Ma has what her younger brother Teddy calls a “superpower”: some of the stories that Zadie writes come true. It’s true of the ants whose lives Zadie saves from her mother’s wrath by writing a story about a little ant who anticipates the poison. It’s true of a fox she writes about that then appears.
Like countless other migrants from China, Hugo Wong’s great-grandfathers–Wong Foon Chuck and Leung Hing—travel across the Pacific to make a life for themselves in San Francisco. Unlike many of their peers, they don’t stay, instead traveling south, to Mexico—in part to escape growing anti-Chinese prejudice in the United States.
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