Keru Cai’s Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism examines the ways in which early 20th-century Chinese writers drew upon Russian works about the socially downtrodden to describe poverty, in a bid to enrich Chinese culture by creating a syncretic new realism. Modern Chinese realist writers turned to the topic of material poverty—peasants suffering from famine, exploited urban laborers, homeless orphans—to convey their sense of textual poverty and national backwardness.
Mesopotamia is having a moment. Moudhy Al-Rashid’s Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History, joins among others Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000-Year History of Iraq by Bartle Bull, The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present by Allen James Fromherz and, some more esoterically, Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author by Sophus Helle, all released in the last 12 months or so.
King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, starts with Lear dividing up his kingdom between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Goneril and Regan win the kingdom through flattery, Cordelia’s honesty is rewarded with exile.
A family has gathered in a mansion to discuss the inheritance of a wealthy grandfather’s estate. It is a familiar mystery setup, and one that risks cliché, but Yasuhiko Nishizawa takes it into exciting new territory in The Man Who Died Seven Times. Nearly the whole story occurs within a single repeating day, much like the time-looping premise of the classic film Groundhog Day. Faced with his grandfather’s murder, the protagonist must sort out the nature of the crime (and try to prevent it) by altering the course of that day’s events.
Mandy Moe Pwint Tu describes herself as “a pile of ginkgo leaves in a trench coat from Yangon, Myanmar”; it perhaps comes as no surprise that she is a poet. She is also one now firmly ensconced in American poetry circles and with an MFA under her belt. Fablemaker is her first full-length collection and includes poems from her earlier chapbooks.
In Mistress Koharu, a Hungarian love doll comes to life, turning heads as she stalks the streets of Tokyo, while the man who bought her—Akira—strings along two other relationships in a spectacular feat of multitasking greed that benefits no one, least of all him. Written in Japanese by Noboru Tsujihara and translated by Kalau Almony, the novel, leaning bizarre and absurdist, is still an insightful meditation on lust, power, and greed.
This book tells the inside story of how Singapore defied considerable odds to develop a dynamic economy and cohesive society in the 60 years since the city-state’s independence.
Through in-depth interviews with some of the nation’s most influential leaders—Abdullah Tarmugi, Chan Sek Keong, Cheong Koon Hean, Halimah Yacob, Peter Ho, Khaw Boon Wan, Lim Siong Guan, Ravi Menon, Seah Jiak Choo, Tan Yong Soon, Eddie Teo, Teo Ming Kian—How Singapore Beat the Odds explores various facets of public policy that shaped Singapore’s remarkable transformation.
Bornean-Australian novelist, playwright, poet, rapper and visual artist Omar Musa comes with a bit of a pedigree. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and for the Miles Franklin Award. He was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
Cities and villages are not binaries but exist on a continuum. In Reformatting Agrarian Pasts: Urban History from the Countryside in Colonial India, urban historian William J Glover traces the events and infrastructure projects that intertwine rural and urban spaces through specific administrative policies formulated and implemented by the British government. For Glover, the importance of this history lies in the way the interconnection has continued for contemporary India: India is no longer an agricultural economy the way it has traditionally been understood.
How do you tell the story of India—not just the modern-day country, but the whole region of South Asia, home to over two billion people?
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