Southeast Asia

Excerpts | Non-Fiction Excerpts
Excerpt from “Divergent Worlds: What the Ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Can Tell Us About the Future of International Order” by Amitav Acharya & Manjeet S Pardesi
29 March 202528 March 2025
A dynamic and interactionist multiplex order existed in the classical eastern Indian Ocean corresponding with modern Southeast Asia (~1st—15th centuries CE). This regional order was not the product of superior Chinese imperial/material power, or some essentialist version of the tributary system. Nor did Indic ideas spread “naturally” into an ideational vacuum in Southeast Asia. This…
Read More Excerpt from “Divergent Worlds: What the Ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Can Tell Us About the Future of International Order” by Amitav Acharya & Manjeet S Pardesi
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines” by Kathleen C Gutierrez
24 March 2025
Had the eminent physicist Ernest Rutherford actually once said that “all science is either physics or stamp collecting”, he might have botany in mind, a discipline the very basis of which is collecting and labelling plants according to strict taxonomies. In her (perhaps aptly entitled) new book, Unmaking Botany, Kathleen C Gutierrez sets about describing…
Read More “Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines” by Kathleen C Gutierrez
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Enchanted Modernities: Ancestral Vitalizations in the Upper Mekong” by Micah F Morton
8 March 20259 March 2025
Akha Ghanr is, for Akha communities, a “highly pragmatic system of customary law encompassing an entire way of life”, or it could be better described as “Ancestral ways”, acknowledging the role and leadership of their ancestors, something that is central to Akha identity and culture. How it has changed over time is the subject of…
Read More “Enchanted Modernities: Ancestral Vitalizations in the Upper Mekong” by Micah F Morton
Podcast
Podcast with Kishore Mahbubani, author of “Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir”
27 February 2025
Kishore Mahbubani, longtime Singaporean diplomat and academic, opens his new memoir with a provocative line: “Blame it on the damn British.” Kishore, who later served as Singapore’s ambassador to the UN and founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was born to poor migrants in Singapore, studied philosophy on a government…
Read More Podcast with Kishore Mahbubani, author of “Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir”
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Early Southeast Asia: From First Humans to First Civilizations” by Charles Higham
21 February 202521 February 2025
Quite a lot of archaeological water, to say nothing of history writing, has flowed under the bridge since Early Southeast Asia’s first edition in 2014.
Read More “Early Southeast Asia: From First Humans to First Civilizations” by Charles Higham
Non-Fiction Reviews
“In Praise of Floods” by James C Scott
18 February 202521 February 2025
In Praise of Floods is the final book by James C Scott, a renowned anthropologist and political scientist, published posthumously after he died in 2024. Much of Scott’s earlier work has focused on agrarian politics and acts of political resistance, this is a rather different book, focusing instead on the life history of a river,…
Read More “In Praise of Floods” by James C Scott
Podcast
Podcast with Bertil Lintner, author of “The Golden Land Ablaze”
13 February 202515 February 2025
Four years ago, on 1 February 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially known as Myanmar. That sparked a civil war that continues today–with neither the military junta nor the various rebel groups coming closer to victory.
Read More Podcast with Bertil Lintner, author of “The Golden Land Ablaze”
Fiction Reviews
“The South” by Tash Aw
10 February 202511 February 2025
A trip down south turns out to be more life-changing than a family getaway in this passionate story of sexual awakening set in late 1990s Malaysia. The novel is the first in a planned quartet which follows the Lim family and their struggles with racism, gender, sexuality and, most importantly, inter-generational conflict.
Read More “The South” by Tash Aw
New Fiction Books
New Book Announcement: “Lotusland” by David Joiner
7 February 2025
In its revised, ten-year anniversary edition, Lotusland remains one of the only works of fiction by a US author to bridge the literary gap between the Vietnam War and contemporary Vietnam.
Read More New Book Announcement: “Lotusland” by David Joiner
Fiction Reviews
“A Passage to Siam: A Story of Forbidden Love” by V Vinicchayakul
3 February 20255 February 2025
Ukrainian-born nurse Kateryna Ivanonva Desnytska became a Thai princess at the turn of the 20th century as wife of the Siamese prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath. This story, with echoes of that of King Chulalongkorn and his English tutor Anna Leonowens (immortalized in The King and I) , has obvious potential for artistic adaptation: it was made…
Read More “A Passage to Siam: A Story of Forbidden Love” by V Vinicchayakul
Podcast
Podcast with Glenn Diaz, author of “Yñiga”
16 January 2025
Yñiga, the main character of Glenn Diaz’s novel of the same name, returns to her unnamed fishing town after her urban neighborhood burns down in a fire—what many suspect is retaliation for the capture of a wanted army general near her house. What follows is a story about activist politics, state retaliation and returning home.
Read More Podcast with Glenn Diaz, author of “Yñiga”
Non-Fiction Reviews
Podcast with Juan José Rivas Moreno, author of “The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization”
26 December 2024
Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one way, and Chinese-made goods the other. But how did the Galleons actually work? Who paid for them? How did buyers and sellers negotiate with each other? Who set the rules? Why…
Read More Podcast with Juan José Rivas Moreno, author of “The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization”
Non-Fiction Reviews
“The Golden Land Ablaze” by Bertil Lintner
23 December 202426 December 2024
In Myanmar today, resistance against the 2021 coup and the military regime, has spread across the entire country, and fighting has engulfed the state, displacing millions and leaving the country in a state of turmoil. To explain how we got to this point, and what is the future for both the resistance movement and the…
Read More “The Golden Land Ablaze” by Bertil Lintner
Podcast
Podcast with Herald van der Linde, author of “Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia’s Greatest Empire”
12 December 202412 December 2024
Majapahit was Indonesia, and Southeast Asia’s, largest empire. Centered on the island of Java, Majapahit commanded loyalty from vassals across the archipelago: on Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and even the Malay Peninsula, including a tiny village called Tumasik—known today as Singapore. The empire lasted for around 230 years, from its founding in 1292 to its fall…
Read More Podcast with Herald van der Linde, author of “Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia’s Greatest Empire”
Fiction Reviews
“Behind the Painting” by Siburapha
26 November 202426 November 2024
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…
Read More “Behind the Painting” by Siburapha

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