“Trading at the Edge of Empires Francesco Carletti’s World, c. 1600”
At the turn of the 17th century, Florentine Francesco Carletti left from Seville with his father Antonio for Cape Verde, where they were planning to buy slaves for resale in the Caribbean. He ended up in an almost decade-long circumnavigation of the world, the first private citizen to do so. His travels took him to…
“Writing Between Languages: Translation and Multilingualism in Indian Francophone Writing” by Sheela Mahadevan
Much of the contemporary Indian literary landscape features writing in English and Indian languages, but Sheela Mahadevan points to the…
“The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals: How Practical Arithmetic Shaped Commerce and Mathematics in Western Europe, 1200-1600” by Raffaele Danna
There is, despite the title, very little that is Asian in Raffaele Danna’s new The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals. The…
“Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea” by Fyodor Tertitskiy
Sequels seldom seem as good as the works from which they spring. Many seem to repeat the originals, simply going…
“The Khan and the Unicorn: Mongol Empire and Qing Knowledge in the Making of World History” by Matthew V Mosca
Leading the vanguard of his armies across India, Genghis Khan suddenly encountered an uncanny animal, blue‑green in colour, with the…
“Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics” by Margaret S Graves
It normally makes a great difference to art “history” if a given object is authentic or fabricated. And yet, the fabrication of any given object, to say nothing of a class of objects, carries within its own history: one not always of fraud, but also of gatekeeping on the one hand and exploitation on the…
“Hooked: A Novel of Obsession” by Asako Yuzuki
Asako Yuzuki came onto the English literary scene with her best-selling novel, Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, based on the true story of a female serial killer. Her latest novel, Hooked: A Novel of Obsession, also translated by Polly Barton, explores female friendship. The story may not be as frightening as that of…
“The Competition of Unfinished Stories” by Sener Ozmen
Sertac Karan, a Turkish-Kurd and the protagonist of this absurdist black comedy, is a would-be writer who is alienated from…
“The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks” by Eka Kurniawan
Eka Kurniawan’s The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks follows the coming of age of Sato Reang, a mischievous boy growing up…
“No Man River” by Dương Hướng
War, in No Man River, is an endless affair. Sprawling from the 1950s to the 1970s, the novel follows a close-knit…
“Sakura” by Kanako Nishi
The Osaka-based Hasegawas used to be a model family—happily married, two sons, a daughter, and a dog. But when the…
“The Luminous Fairies and Mothra” by Takehiko Fukunaga, Yoshie Hotta & Shin’ichiro Nakamura
In 2023, University of Minnesota Press released a translation of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. The two novellas (published as one volume with a thorough explanatory afterword by translator Jeffrey Angles) add the often-forgotten backstory to one of the world’s most iconic monster movies, often credited solely to the imaginations of director Ishiro Honda and…
“Samurai” by Rosina Buckland and Oleg Benesch
Lavishly illustrated, Samurai explores the reality and myths of the samurai from medieval times to today’s popular culture through objects from international collections. Essays by scholars throughout the book discuss…
“Observing the Unseen: Curiosity and Common Knowledge in Early Modern China” by Andrew Schonebaum
Observing the Unseen explores how literate and marginally literate people in China between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries investigated the invisible, the ubiquitous, and the inexplicable. Whether through medical encyclopedias, daily-use…
“Emotions, Affect, and Narrative in Korean History and Culture”, edited by Jisoo M Kim
This collection of eleven essays explores emotions and affect in Korean culture across a broad temporal span, from the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) to the present. Drawing on a diverse array…
“The Lake of Tears” by Veeraporn Nitiprapha
The Lake of Tears is Veeraporn’s third novel, following The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth and Memories of the Memories of the Black Rose Cat. Unlike those novels, it is…
“The Memory Tree” (Series) by Veena Naravane
The author, a former president of Army Women’s Welfare Association in India, explores the layered nature of grief in military families, especially for children, through The Memory Tree, a three-book…
“Taiwanese Face, Chinese Masks: Yang Mu and His Postcolonial Poetry” by Wen-chi Li
This groundbreaking study examines the poetry of Yang Mu, a pivotal Taiwanese writer who used Chinese literary forms to challenge Sinocentric narratives during Taiwan’s White Terror and democratization. Drawing on…
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