Paul French
Paul French is author North Korea: Paranoid Peninsula. He writes regularly on Chinese and North Korean economics and politics for a wide variety of publications.
Red Mandarin Dress by Qiu Xiaolong
PAUL FRENCH | 16 December 2007In RED MANDARIN DRESS, QIU XIAOLONG's fifth Inspector Chen novel, he's finally pulled of a brilliant blend of east and west. Not that the first four Inspector Chen novels, all set in 1990s Shanghai, weren't good, but the latest is a consummate blend of the Chinese approach to crime solving and western noir crime fiction -- Raymond Chandler on The Bund. Inspector Chen aficionados already know the poet-detective well and his milieu of 1990s... [ more ]
Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century by Kerry Brown
PAUL FRENCH | 13 August 2007Over the last 18 months, I have received on average at least one newly-published book on China weekly. In the last decade, a trickle has turned into a stream and then a river and now a flood of New Orleans-like proportions. Fortunately, the majority of these books have been sent free of charge... [ more ]
Welcome to Pyongyang by Charlie Crane
PAUL FRENCH | 22 April 2007Books of photographs of Pyongyang are to be welcomed for two reasons: first, only about 1500 westerners a year visit and second, they all take exactly the same photographs due to the rather shepherded nature of tour groups to the DPRK. As Nick... [ more ]
A Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong
PAUL FRENCH | 11 February 2007What a story! A massive Chinese showcase city where a scandal over missing public funds involves videotaped love trysts, payments to mistresses and no-questions-asked loans to new development companies with fantastical names such as the Everlasting Virtue Company. Teams of crack investigators are sent from the capital, leading party figures are brought down in disgrace, mistresses attempt suicide, hundreds of millions of... [ more ]
Londonstani by Gautam Malkani
PAUL FRENCH | 16 September 2006Immigrants to London have always profoundly affected the local language but it's rarely been recorded well. The inflections and slang of Yiddish, West Indian and South Asian dialects have infiltrated urban English almost seamlessly. Growing up in London, my grandparents used to talk about the Bessarabian Tigers -- a gang of Jewish lads in Whitechapel in the 1920s who foreshadowed the LONDONSTANIdesis (slang for South... [ more ]
Guangxi: Microsoft, China and Bill Gates's Plan to Win the Road Ahead by Robert Buderi and Gregory T. Huang
PAUL FRENCH | 27 August 2006This book will appeal to those who like anecdotal studies rather than discussions of the hard stuff in China. ROBERT BUDERI AND GREGORY T. HUANG, an MIT research fellow and Editor for New Scientist respectively, fill their book GUANGXI: MICROSOFT, CHINA AND BILL GATES'S PLAN TO WIN THE ROAD AHEADwith tales from the back of the Microsoft bus as it rattles across China. It's the story of Microsoft Research Asia -- the company's large research lab in Beijing that sucks in Chinese techie talent and attempts... [ more ]
The Dragon's Pearl by Sirin Phathanothai
PAUL FRENCH | 17 June 2006The publication of a new edition of SIRIN PHATHANOTHAI memoir of her youth in China THE DRAGON'S PEARL is timely as this year is the 40th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution. Not much celebration or reflection occurred in the Chinese media, obviously; none in fact. But the Cultural Revolution is at the heart of Phathanothai's memoir, unsurprisingly not least because she and her family suffered during the `ten years of madness' but... [ more ]
The People's Republic of Desire by Annie Wang
PAUL FRENCH | 02 June 2006I can think of few things worse than being stuck in a diner having to listen to those "Sex and the City" girls Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte blather on about their sex lives. Perhaps only having to endure coffee with those "Friends" Rachel, Monica and Phoebe would be worse -- if Ally McBeal turned up for a muffin too. Still, that's the way ANNIE WANG's new novel THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE is inevitably going to be marketed. Readers of... [ more ]
