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“For the Love of Stories” by Wendy Doniger
As luck would have it, this year two important scholars of India published memoirs reflecting their nine decades of life and learning. One of these, Romila Thapar’s Just Being, will be reviewed in the NYRB by none other than Wendy Doniger, whose For the Love of Stories has just been published in India. These twinned publications…
“Privileged But Powerless” by Jieun Baek
North Korea is the most tightly controlled country in the world. It is ruled by the Kim family and their…
“China’s Aristocratic Age” by Yuri Pines
The norm in Chinese political thought for two thousand years has been, to quote Mencius, that “there cannot be two…
“Imperial Iran in the Eighteenth Century” by MAH Parsa
In 1722, a war band of grizzled Afghans battled their way from Kandahar to Esfahan and, after a grim siege,…
“Approaching the Buddha” by Hao Sheng
Approaching the Buddha: Transmission and Transformation, is based on the Xuzhou Collection, a dazzling array of ceremonial objects assembled by…
“On Thin Ice” by Charlie Walker
Walking through Siberia in the dead of winter may not, on the face of it, sound like a very good idea, yet that is what Charlie Walker intended to do in February 2022. Yakutsk is built on the banks of the Lena River and I would ski-trek northwards along the water’s frozen surface for 1,000…
“The Best of Urdu Short Stories”
Anthologists are wont to label their collections “the best” or “the greatest”. In The Best of Urdu Short Stories, Mehr Afshan Farooqi does the same. With the focus on the a particular genre, called afsana or kahani in Urdu, she puts her spin on “best” by bringing together new writers along with the canonical Saadat…
“Birds in a Gale: A Novel” by Ata Nahai
Nahai, who hails from Iranian Kurdistan, is regarded as one of the leading contemporary novelists writing in Kurdish. Birds in…
“Good-Bye” by Osamu Dazai
Osamu Dazai’s Good-Bye is a collection of short stories picked from different stages of his career, most of which have…
“Leave and Come Back” by Lavanya Lakshmi
Shah Rukh Khan is such a well-known Indian actor that his name is likely to be recognized even by people…
“Shift” by Cho Yeeun
At first, Cho Yeeun’s Shift, recently translated by Yewon Jung, might be mistaken for a straight-up detective novel. Yi Chang,…
“Babylon, South Dakota” by Tom Lin
Tom Lin’s debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, paid homage to the American Western, with a Chinese twist, and his lyrical writing style is well suited to the cowboy culture of the American Wild West. He’s back with Babylon, South Dakota, a novel just as colourful as his first. Where his first novel…
“Songs in a Time Confinement” by Rashmy
Rashmy writes poetry in a Tamil unique to the East Coast of Sri Lanka, embedded in its ecologies and heavily influenced by its folklore, centuries of trade, and echoes of…
“Miya’s Mooncakes” by Crystal Z Lee
It’s almost time for Miya’s favorite holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival. She loves all the holiday traditions: moon gazing, lighting lanterns, and best of all, baking and eating mooncakes! But after…
“The Transpacific Chinese Diaspora” by Zhongping Chen
In The Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, Chen examines the origins, rise, and reform of the Cantonese-dominated Chinese diaspora in Canada between 1788 and 1898. Combining a diasporic approach with both qualitative…
“Becoming Allies: Civil Liberties Activism in India” by Ankita Pandey
What motivates individuals to stand up against injustices that don’t personally affect them? Becoming Allies explores a vital but often overlooked dimension of social movements: the role of those who…
“Lahore After Modernism” by Chris Moffat
Lahore After Modernism is a pioneering study of architecture and the politics of construction, destruction and conservation in urban Pakistan. In the decades after independence in 1947, architects in Pakistan…
“Earthly Playing Field” by Radhika Singh
Roma has a steady job, a mortgage, and a surrogate family in Queens. But as she moves through her daily routines, the powerful Empire that rules her world bares its…
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