Shows / Asian Review of Books
Asian Review of Books
The Asian Review of Books is the only dedicated pan-Asian book review publication. Widely quoted, referenced, republished by leading publications in Asian and beyond and with an archive of more than two thousand book reviews, the ARB also features long-format essays by leading Asian writers and thinkers, excerpts from newly-published books and reviews of arts and culture. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
Episodes
- Asian Review of Books
Sandy Gall, "Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud" (Haus Publishing, 2021)
On September 9th, 2001, Ahmed Shah Massoud—called one of the greatest guerilla leaders in history, alongside names like Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, was…
- Asian Review of Books
Arup K. Chatterjee, "Indians in London: From the Birth of the East India Company to Independent India" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
London has always been a galvanizing factor for the South Asian community—whether due to the machinations of empire, the drive for higher education, or the…
- Asian Review of Books
Ira Mukhoty, "Song of Draupadi" (Aleph Book Company, 2021)
The Mahabharata is one of the central works of Indian literature—its characters, lessons, and tropes are widely known and referenced in Indian popular culture…
- Asian Review of Books
Claudio Sopranzetti and Sara Fabbri, "King of Bangkok" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
Bangkok, as Thailand’s largest and most economically-important cities, attracts migrants from all over the country. Drawn to its economic opportunities…
- Asian Review of Books
Marc David Baer, "The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs" (Basic Books, 2021)
The Ottoman Empire has been many things throughout its long history. One of the greatest and gravest threats to Christian Europe. A source of inspiration for…
- Asian Review of Books
Paul French, "Bloody Saturday: Shanghai's Darkest Day" (Penguin, 2018)
The Thirties and Forties were some of the first instances of aerial bombardment of civilian populations—and an indication of their destructive power. We often…
- Asian Review of Books
Colin Thubron, "The Amur River: Between Russia and China" (Harper, 2021)
It’s a great pleasure to welcome Colin Thubron to the Asian Review of Books podcast. Travel writer and novelist, Colin has written countless books that bring…
- Asian Review of Books
Catherine S. Chan, "Macanese Diaspora in British Hong: A Century of Transimperial Drifting" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)
In Hong Kong’s Ice House Street, in the heart of the city’s Financial District, is Club Lusitano: one of the city’s premier social clubs, nestled at the top of…
- Asian Review of Books
Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey, "On the Edge: Life Along the Russia-China Border" (Harvard UP, 2021)
The border between Russia and China is one of the world’s longest, spanning thousands of miles. It’s one of the few extended land borders between two great…
- Asian Review of Books
Sumantra Bose, "Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict" (Yale UP, 2021)
“Kashmir” carries the burden of being known as one of the world’s biggest flashpoints. If a novel, TV show, or video game wants an easy international crisis…
- Asian Review of Books
Cheng Li, "Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement" (Brookings Institution Press, 2021)
In mid-November, Washington and Beijing mutually agreed to start granting journalist visas again, putting an end to months of reciprocal visa rejections and…
- Asian Review of Books
Saumya Roy, "Mountain Tales: Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings" (Profile Books, 2021)
In 2016, the city of Mumbai was blanketed in toxic smog. The source? Fires at the nearby dumping ground of Deonar: the country’s oldest. The Deonar fire became…
- Asian Review of Books
Albert Samaha, "Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes" (Penguin, 2021)
One of the first members of Albert Samaha’s family introduced in his memoir Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes (Riverhead Books, 2021) is his uncle…
- Asian Review of Books
James Kelly Morningstar, "War and Resistance in the Philippines 1942-1944" (US Naval Institute Press, 2021)
December 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the Second World War. In fact, this interview was recorded on December…
- Asian Review of Books
Amish Raj Mulmi, "All Roads Lead North: China, Nepal and the Contest for the Himalayas" (Context, 2021)
On the sidelines of COP26, Nepali Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi as part of an effort to find a way to rebuild ties…
- Asian Review of Books
Thane Gustafson, "Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change" (Harvard UP, 2021)
With COP26 and high fossil fuel prices, energy is back in the headlines. And Russia, as one of the world’s largest producers of hydrocarbons, is part of the…
- Asian Review of Books
Melissa Macauley, "Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier" (Princeton UP, 2021)
“The Europeans raise all the cattle, but the Chinese get all the milk.” This joke, told in colonial Singapore, was indicative of the importance of the Chinese…
- Asian Review of Books
Xavier Naville, "The Lettuce Diaries: How A Frenchman Found Gold Growing Vegetables In China" (Earnshaw Books, 2021)
Many Western entrepreneurs and businesses have foundered in trying to set up shop in China. Different expectations, different ways of doing business, different…
- Asian Review of Books
Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (PublicAffairs: 2021)
The Second Battle of El-Alamein, alongside Stalingrad and Midway, is taught in schools the world over as one of the turning points of the Second World War—or…
- Asian Review of Books
Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, "Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Globalization is possibly the most important economic phenomenon of the past several decades. Opening borders, increasing trade and deepening integration has…
- Asian Review of Books
Tim Hannigan, "The Travel Writing Tribe" (Hurst Publishing, 2021)
As most of us are stuck at home, whether due to lockdowns or border closures, some of us have returned to the idea of travel writing: nonfiction that charts…
- Asian Review of Books
Halimah Marcus, "Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond" (Harper Perennial, 2021)
We’re celebrating our one-year anniversary with this interview, and so I wanted to introduce a special guest for today: Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, talented writer…
- Asian Review of Books
Elizabeth Lacouture, "Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860-1960" (Columbia UP, 2021)
To call the hundred years that straddle the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries as a radical period of change for China is an understatement, moving from the…
- Asian Review of Books
Timon Screech, "The Shogun's Silver Telescope: God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625" (Oxford UP, 2020)
An English mission to Japan arrives in 1613 with all the standard English commodities, including wool and cloth: which the English hope to trade for Japanese…
- Asian Review of Books
Jeevan Vasagar, "Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
Everyone looks to Singapore as a role model for what they want their country to be. Several countries from China to Rwanda hope to emulate its high…
- Asian Review of Books
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, "Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society, and Culture" (U Washington Press, 2021)
One would think that comparing civilizations as far removed in time and space as Ancient Egypt and Ancient China might not reveal much. Yet Professor Tony…
- Asian Review of Books
Yashaswini Chandra, "The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback" (Picador India, 2021)
The horse is an important symbol in India’s culture, as shown by the many stories and works we see of Indian royalty and adventurers on horseback. As noted by…
- Asian Review of Books
Edmund Richardson, "Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City Beneath the Mountains" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
The story of Alexander the Great has inspired conquerors and would-be conquerors throughout history. Alexander’s sweep through the Middle East and Central Asia…
- Asian Review of Books
Lindsey Miller, "North Korea: Like Nowhere Else" (September, 2021)
It’s a cliche to call North Korea the most isolated country in the world. Those of us living outside the country often have very little idea of what life there…
- Asian Review of Books
Jagjeet Lally, "India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World" (Oxford UP, 2021)
When we think about modern trade, we tend to think about the sea: port cities and large ships carrying goods back and forth. It’s a story that tends to put…
- Asian Review of Books
Jason M. Kelly, "Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China's Capitalist Ascent" (Harvard UP, 2021)
We think we know the history of China’s opening to the outside world. Maoist China was closed off, until Deng Xiaoping decided to reform the economy and open…
- Asian Review of Books
Pornsak Pichetshote, "The Good Asian, Volume 1" (Image Comics, 2021)
Edison Hark, the star of The Good Asian (Image Comics: 2021), the new comic series written by Pornsak Pichetshote and illustrated by Alexandre Tefenkgi, never…
- Asian Review of Books
Tom Lin, "The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu" (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)
It’s a common tale: a gunman out for revenge in the American West, whose six-shooter leaves a trail of bodies behind him. But The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu…
- Asian Review of Books
Chris Miller, "We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Russia’s position between Europe and Asia has led to differing conceptions of “what Russia is” to its leaders. Russia’s vast holdings east of the Urals have…
- Asian Review of Books
Tonio Andrade, "The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China" (Princeton UP, 2021)
On January 10th, 1795, a very tired caravan arrives in Beijing. The travelers have journeyed from Canton on an accelerated schedule through harsh terrain in…
- Asian Review of Books
Suchitra Vijayan, "Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India" (Melville House, 2021)
Borders are “important”: they define, in legal terms, who we are, our identity, and our rights. Except borders are rarely imposed with any thought to the…
- Asian Review of Books
Marie Favereau, "The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Most of our understanding of the Mongol Empire begins and ends with Chinggis Khan and his sweep across Asia. His name is now included among conquerors whose…
- Asian Review of Books
Larry Feign, "The Flower Boat Girl: A Novel Based on a True Story" (Top Floor Books, 2021)
It can be easy to forget amongst the glistening skyscrapers, bustling streets and neon lights, but the Pearl River Delta used to be a haven for banditry and…
- Asian Review of Books
Namit Arora, "Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization" (Viking, 2021)
We can sometimes forget that “India”—or the idea of a single unified entity—is not a very old concept. Indian history is complicated and convoluted: different…
- Asian Review of Books
Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, "Empire's Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper" (Duke UP, 2021)
Isabel Rosario Cooper, if mentioned at all by mainstream history books, is often a salacious footnote: the young Filipino mistress of General Douglas…
- Asian Review of Books
Samira Shackle, "Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City" (Melville House, 2021)
A young man who turns his desire to join the army into a long stint as a volunteer ambulance driver. A teacher living in an old slum who is the only one…
- Asian Review of Books
Catherine Menon, "Fragile Monsters" (Viking, 2021)
The year is 1985. Durga is visiting her grandmother Mary in rural Malaysia. It’s not a particularly happy occasion: Mary is tough and sharp-tongued, and “home”…
- Asian Review of Books
Emei Burell, "We Served the People: My Mother's Stories" (Archaia, 2020)
During the Cultural Revolution, many young Chinese in the cities were encouraged — if not ordered — to move to the countryside. Millions of young Chinese in…
- Asian Review of Books
Mehr Afshan Farooqi, "Ghalib: a Wilderness at My Doorstep: A Critical Biography" (Allen Lane, 2021)
Mirza Ghalib is one of the most celebrated poets in the Urdu literary canon. Yet, at the time, Ghalib was prolific in both Urdu and Persian. His output in…
- Asian Review of Books
Jenny White, "Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence" (Princeton UP, 2021)
The scene is Turkey in the mid-to-late Seventies. A young male college student hops onto a bus. He sits next to a cute female student from his class, but…
- Asian Review of Books
Amit Chaudhuri, "Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music" (NYRB, 2021)
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and…
- Asian Review of Books
Razeen Sally, "Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Island" (Juggernaut, 2019)
Return to Sri Lanka: Travels is a Paradoxical Island (Juggernaut, 2019), the latest book by Professor Razeen Sally, describes the country with the following…
- Asian Review of Books
Raza Mir, "Murder at the Mushaira: A Novel" (Aleph Book, 2021)
May 1857. The Indian city of Shahjahanabad, today called Delhi, is tense. British officers are worried about rumors of insubordination and rebellion elsewhere…
- Asian Review of Books
Jonathan Chatwin, "Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China" (Manchester UP, 2019)
Changan Jie, or Long Peace Street, stretches across central Beijing. Along it are several critical historical sites, including Zhongnanhai, Tiananmen Square…
- Asian Review of Books
Timon Screech, "Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo" (Reaktion Books, 2020)
In 1800, the Shogun’s chief minister wrote the following about the city of Edo: "Someone said that if Edo did not have frequent fires, then people would be…
- Asian Review of Books
Eugenia Cheng, "x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender" (Basic Book, 2020)
From its more mainstream, business-focused and business-friendly “Lean In” variants, to more radical, critical and intersectional understandings of feminism…
- Asian Review of Books
Janet M. Hartley, "The Volga: A History" (Yale UP, 2021)
"The Volga! There is a mystery, a charm in all mighty rivers, which has ever made us gaze upon them with an interest beyond that inspired by other great and…
- Asian Review of Books
Te-Ping Chen, "Land of Big Numbers: Stories" (Mariner Books, 2021)
An old farmer, trying to build a plane in his village. A young man that gambles everything on the roaring stock market. A community transformed by a magical…
- Asian Review of Books
Wu Cheng'en, "Monkey King: Journey to the West," trans. Julia Lovell (Penguin, 2021)
Journey to the West, and especially the character of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is beloved by readers across China, East Asia, and beyond. The story and its…
- Asian Review of Books
Priya Basil, "Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community, and the Meaning of Generosity" (Knopf, 2020)
The French philosopher Jacques Derrida once described his idea of absolute hospitality as follows: Absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and…
- Asian Review of Books
Debashree Mukherjee, "Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City" (Columbia UP, 2020)
In 1935, the writer Baburao Patel writes the following about Bombay’s film industry: “In India, with financing conditions still precarious, the professional…
- Asian Review of Books
Dexter Roberts, "The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World" (St. Martin’s Press, 2020)
Around the Chinese New Year period, millions of Chinese migrant workers return home from jobs in China’s major cities to their rural villages to visit their…
- Asian Review of Books
Oliver Craske, "Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar" (Hachette, 2020)
At 10:20pm on August 15th, 1969, Ravi Shankar — then, and still, the most famous practitioner of the sitar and Indian classical music — takes the stage at…
- Asian Review of Books
Ethan Lou, "Field Notes from a Pandemic: A Journey Through a World Suspended" (Signal, 2020)
We are just over a year from when global news first reported a new type of pneumonia emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A lockdown of Wuhan on January…
- Asian Review of Books
Ed Caesar, "The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest" (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster, 2020)
In 1933, Maurice Wilson — First World War hero, drifting veteran, and amateur aviator, lands in the aerodrome at Purnea in British India. His goal is to be the…