Douglas Crets
Douglas Crets is the director of The Writing Life Project, a workshop series dedicated to offering intensive editing and creative writing experiences for secondary school students in Hong Kong.
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi
DOUGLAS CRETS | 27 August 2004MARJANE SATRAPI is not that special. She may have written one of this year's most powerful graphic novels about war, liberty, heartache, fear, depression and the exile of the refugee. All abstract concerns, perhaps -- but the U.N. predicts that in the 21st century, just under 3% of the world's population is living outside of their homeland.... [ more ]
Murder at the Horny Toad Bar and Other Outrageous Tales of Thailand by Dean Barrett
DOUGLAS CRETS | 08 July 2004Western visitors who have scoffed at the banality of jet lag and traipsed off to Southeast Asian cities are probably aware of two things: sex has a more visceral presence in daily life, and especially in cities like Bangkok, sex plays an integral role in the economy. It's a matter of fact that sex is available at any price for anyone willing to explore it. And it's a matter of fact that there is a certain breed of male who has... [ more ]
The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Ted Riccardi
DOUGLAS CRETS | 23 February 2004Action. Mystery. Zombies that solve crimes! Sherlock Holmes is back.
TED RICCARDI is one smart cookie. A professor at Columbia University in New York, he's just written his first novel, but one can be forgiven for believing it's actually from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And in the epilogue, Riccardi... [ more ]
Food Court by Timothy Kaiser
DOUGLAS CRETS | 16 December 2003Students learning the craft of poetry (or even just learning English) must read TIMOTHY KAISER's first collection of poetry for, if nothing else, the sheer scale of creative acts he pulls off in its hefty 150 pages.
Kaiser's accessible, witty and playful (though at times somber) volume artfully spans... [ more ]
Reading 'Lolita' in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
DOUGLAS CRETS | 19 November 2003At first glance, a book about seven Iranian women and their professor secretly reading Nabokov's Lolita may not seem to have much to do with life here in East Asia.
The claim implicit in AZAR NAFISI's READING 'LOLITA' IN TEHRAN, however, is that Western literature not just embodies universal values but that literature can help liberate the minds from whatever forms of political and social oppression they may... [ more ]
