“The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland” by Carol Isaacs
In the 1940s, a third of Baghdad was Jewish. Today, fewer than a dozen remain.
“The Great Flowing River: A Memoir of China, from Manchuria to Taiwan” by Chi Pang-yuan
When Chi Pang-yuan was a young girl, her father Chi Shiying was wanted by warlord Zhang Zuolin and his son, Zhang Xueliang. The crime was siding with a rival general, Guo Songling, at a time when the Republic was still relatively young and northeast China in constant turmoil. For most of her childhood and teenage…
“Philippine Sanctuary: A Holocaust Odyssey” by Bonnie M Harris
The story of the Jewish refugees in Asia during World War II almost always centers on Shanghai. Plenty of books, movies, and plays tell how twenty thousand German and Eastern European Jews found their way to Shanghai when most of the world had closed their borders to Jews. But there was another place in Asia…
“Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge: Two Memoirs About Courtesans” by Mao Xiang and Yu Huai, translated and edited by Wai-yee Li
The twilight of the Ming Dynasty in Southern China, with its elegant courtesans, poets and playwrights, pageants, drinking bouts and boat rides, bedazzled the generation which witnessed its fall in 1644. It inspired a literary legacy which has fascinated readers ever since. The Ming twilight in “Southland” is immortalized in Kong Shang-Ren’s (d. 1719) classic…
“Year of the Rabbit” by Tian Veasna
Year of the Rabbit is a graphic memoir that follows the journey of Lina, Khim, their son Chan, and their extended family members, as the Khmer Rouge take over Phnom Penh. Graphic in format, graphic in content, it is a story of resilience and hope, a profound testimony to one of the greatest tragedies of…
Dragon Boats of Yore: an excerpt from volume 3 of “Old Hong Kong Photos and the Tales They Tell”
My books all begin with photos, photos from my collection that show Hong Kong in the late 19th and early 20th century. I choose each photo for the stories it has to tell—some obvious, others that need a closer look to uncover.
“The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India” by Supriya Gandhi
It was 1675, and Londoners were eager to see the King’s Company production of the latest play by John Dryden, playwright and Poet Laureate. Aureng-Zebe, for so it was titled, was a heroic verse-drama written in rhyming couplets based on near-contemporary events in India. It featured an exotic combination of eastern despotism, lust and dynastic…
“Tawaifnama” by Saba Dewan
Dressed like Rajput princesses in bangles, rhinestones and brocade tightly fitted over their svelte bodies, the young women created a stir when they entered the elevator of our nondescript apartment block in Singapore. Only later did I learn that these were bar dancers, dispatched by their needy families in rural Bihar to earn 200 hundred…
“Islamic Empires: The Cities that Shaped Civilization From Mecca to Dubai” by Justin Marozzi
Justin Marozzi starts his survey of Islamic civilization by noting that the Arab world hasn’t had the best of press lately. “Everywhere you look there’s chaos, fighting, bloodshed, dictatorship, corruption, injustice, unemployment,” a Tunisian friend of his tells him.
New Book Announcement: “The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki and the Thousand Paper Cranes” by Sue DiCicco and Masahiro Sasaki
In this middle-reader book, author Sue DiCicco and Sadako’s older brother Masahiro tell her complete story in English for the first time—how Sadako’s courage throughout her illness inspired family and friends, and how she became a symbol of all people, especially children, who suffer from the impact of war.
“The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India” by Supriya Gandhi
Indians continue to engage with the Mughal Empire in a way they don’t with any other dynasty.
“In the Cauldron: Terror, Tension, and the American Ambassador’s Struggle to Avoid Pearl Harbor” by Lew Paper
Lew Paper’s new book In the Cauldron charts the diplomatic road to Pearl Harbor, mostly through the eyes of the then-US Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew. Paper portrays Grew as a voice crying in the wilderness, showing the way to peace when everyone around him in official circles in both Japan and the United States…
“Shanghai 1935: An American lady’s account of the city and its high-society” by Ruth Day
In 1935, Ruth Day paid a six-week visit to her mother and step-father who were at that time living in Shanghai. When she returned, she published a short book on the trip. The book had a run of just 200 copies and seems to have quickly disappeared—but at least one copy found its way to…
“The First Great Powers: Babylon and Assyria” by Arthur Cotterell
Literary allusions to Babylon and Assyria are often not very complimentary, and they are most certainly based on common misconceptions.
“The Witchhunters: Scandal, Secrets and a Death that Shocked Hong Kong” by Simon J Blake and Nury Vittachi
The 1980 death of Hong Kong police officer John MacLennan shook the territory and made international news, eventually driving the Hong Kong courts to decriminalize homosexuality in 1991.
