Paris in the late 1940s was a time of rebuilding. It was also central to the nascent Communist party in Cambodia. Justin Clark’s new novel, The Zero Season, captures this period in a style reminiscent of Graham Greene with its political tension, complicated love story, and colorful settings.
Historical fiction
Wesley Leon Aroozoo’s story of love and betrayal in late-19th century Singapore, alliteratively titled The Punkhawala and the Prostitute, centers around two characters at the lowest rungs of a society that has traditionally been portrayed, at least during the colonial period, from the perspective of privileged classes.
The conceit of Tulip of Istanbul is that it was “found” as an 18th-century handwritten Ottoman manuscript at a stamp and rare book auction. The arrival of the novel itself is almost as serendipitous: originally published in Turkish in 2009 and then in English in 2015 (also curiously published in Turkey), it is now available to a perhaps wider English-language audience via India’s Niyogi Books.
As India emerges into independence in 1947, Englishman Charlie Strongbow and 23 colleagues set about setting up a smuggling operation on the previously uninhabited Cross Island, just off Bombay’s Ferry Wharf. The aim is to supply the good and the great (and the not-so-good) with contraband cigarettes, cheese, booze, perfume and whatever other Western products the new Indian government is trying to tax.
Inspired by the Glasgow Girls, a collection of pioneering Scottish female artists working in the early 20th century, this third novel from author Maggie Ritchie follows the adventures of two women as they try to make their mark in a male-dominated world.
Much more than a genre novel, this historical whodunnit is the fifth outing for Abir Mukherjee’s pair of mismatched detectives and another opportunity for the award-winning author to breathe fresh air into the British-in-India literary canon.
At a time when many classics are being rewritten with Asian characters in Asian settings, it was perhaps inevitable that Treasure Island would be recast as a Qing dynasty tale involving two notorious pirates, Zheng Yi Sao and Cheung Po Tsai, set in the South China Sea and Ha Long Bay. CB Lee’s A Clash of Steel is a young adult novel that does just that.
Qaraar Ali is a young craftsman in love with the beautiful Abeerah, cherished daughter of a General in the Mughal army. A wanderer, he seeks the company of poets and spends his time visiting the shrines of 18th century Delhi. Trouble is brewing as Persia’s Nadir Shah is gathering a large army and heading towards Delhi. In a few catastrophic moments, Qaraar’s life will be turned upside down. The once idyllic, bustling streets he knew and loved, become tragic scenes of chaos, bloodshed and destruction.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the courageous Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize-winning author of the Gulag Archipelago who died in 2008, considered The Red Wheel his most important work. Its ten volumes cover Russia from pre-World War I days to the fall of the Romanov dynasty and the early months of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Red Wheel was the author’s monumental effort to identify the crucial turning point in 20th century Russian history, and Solzhenitsyn’s admirers consider it and Gulag his “two great literary cathedrals”.
In 1910, Manchuria suffered a terrible epidemic that killed tens of thousands of people in a matter of months. Although the 1918 flu pandemic has taken most of the spotlight when it comes to super spreaders a hundred years ago, HY Yeang writes about the Manchurian pneumonic plague in his debut novel, Blue Sky Mansion.
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