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Asian Review of Books

New Books Network

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

arts books

All Episodes

53:26

Amitav Acharya, "Tragic Nation: Burma--Why and How...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/05/04

In mid-April, Myanmar’s military bombed a village in the country’s northwest, killing over a hundred people in what’s been considered the deadliest attack in the now two-year civil war in the country: The result of the Myanmar military’s coup in February 2021. The airstrike happened after my conversation with Professor Amitav Acharya, author of Tragic Nation Burma--Why and How Democracy Failed (Penguin Random House SEA, 2022). Yet it’s a reminder of the coup and the civil war’s consequences for the

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51:55

Kaamil Ahmed, "I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/04/27

The Rohingya population, from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are a community almost living entirely in exile, whether in refugee camps in Bangladesh, or working on boats throughout the Indian Ocean. The Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, is now the world’s largest. But the Rohingya’s struggles began long before the crisis intensified in 2012 and 2017, as noted in Kaamil Ahmed’s first book, I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers (Hurst, 2023). Kaamil talks to Rohingya

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41:27

Mai Nardone, "Welcome Me to the Kingdom: Stories"...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/04/20

Mai Nardone’s Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random House, 2023) opens with two migrants from Thailand’s northeast who travel to Bangkok to make a new life for themselves in the bustling city. As they enter, they pass under a sign, asking visitors to “Take Home a Thousand Smiles.” It’s an ironic start to their lives in Bangkok, as the two live an unstable, hardscrabble life on Bangkok’s fringes. The two are just a few of the characters that populate Mai Nardone’s short story collection. From a

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43:19

Nikhil Menon, "Planning Democracy: Modern India’s...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/04/13

In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi closed the Planning Commission, which he accused of stifling the country’s growth and being a holdover from the country’s time as a socialist country. It was an ignoble end to the government body, which in the early days of independence charted the country’s Five-Year Plans for economic development. Nikhil Menon, in his first book Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development from Cambridge University Press (2022), looks at how India’s efforts

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48:32

Oliver Slow, "Return of the Junta: Why Myanmar’s...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/04/06

The Myanmar coup on February 1, 2021 shocked the world, and ended an opening that had fostered hopes for democratization and economic development. The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, reversed a decade’s worth of changes, and sparked a civil conflict that has continued for two years since the coup. Why did the military launch a coup? What reasons do the Tatmadaw give for seizing such a central role in the country’s affairs? Oliver Slow, a reporter who was based in Myanmar over the past decades, shares

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28:20

Zeno Sworder, "My Strange Shrinking Parents" (Thames...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/03/30

When the two immigrant parents in Zeno Sworder’s latest illustrated book go to the baker asking for a cake for their son, the baker asks for something different instead of money. “Five centimeters should do it,” says the baker. “Your height, of course” That starts the story of My Strange Shrinking Parents (Thames & Hudson: 2023): a tale that connects to immigration, parental sacrifice, and the changing perspective that comes with growing up. In this interview, Zeno and I talk about immigrant

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44:57

Weijian Shan, "Money Machine: A Trailblazing American...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/03/23

In 2010, Ping An took over Shenzhen Development Bank, ending an experiment that had never been tried before, and not been tried since: a foreign company owning and managing a Chinese bank. Newbridge Capital, a private equity firm, shocked the financial world when it agreed to take over the bank five years earlier–and successfully made it a pioneer. Weijian Shan, then a partner in Newbridge Capital, writes about the whole escapade in his third book Money Machine: A Trailblazing American Venture in

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32:48

Lawrence Osborne, "On Java Road: A Novel" (Hogarth...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/03/16

The star of On Java Road (Hogarth: 2022), the latest novel from Lawrence Osborne, is Adrian Gyle, a down-on-his-luck correspondent in Hong Kong, in the midst of its 2019 protests. Adrian spends his time drinking with Jimmy Tang, a royal screw-up from one of Hong Kong’s tycoon families. But a new character–and an unexpected death–threatens to drive a wedge in their relationship, as Hong Kong is mired in an uncertain future. Lawrence Osborne is the author of The Glass Kingdom, The Forgiven, The Ballad

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47:33

Xin Wen, "The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/03/09

Many of us–who maybe aren’t historians–have an image of the Silk Road: merchants who carried silk from China to as far as ancient Rome, in one of the first global trading networks. Historians have since challenged the idea that there really was such an organized network, instead seeing it as a nineteenth-century metaphor that obscures as much as it explains. But Xin Wen, the author of The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press, 2023), tries to revive the

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44:19

Steve Kemper, "Our Man in Tokyo: An American...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/03/02

In the years leading up to the Second World War, the U.S. was represented in Japan by Ambassador Joseph Grew: born from a patrician family, Harvard-educated, ran away to the foreign service, and deeply respected by his fellow diplomats and Japanese politicians alike. From his arrival in Tokyo in 1932 to when he was eventually repatriated back to the US in 1942, after Pearl Harbor, Grew dutifully reported to and advised the U.S. on what to do with an increasingly imperialist, militarist—and, at many

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25:13

Kyla Zhao, "The Fraud Squad" (Berkley Books, 2023)

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/02/23

Can anyone break into high society? From Cinderella, Eliza Doolittle and Jay Gatsby to Don Draper and Anna Sorokin, characters that can fool their way into the elite through their smarts, willpower and chutzpah help us pierce the pretensions of the rich. Kyla Zhao, in her debut novel, The Fraud Squad (Berkley Books: 2023) creates her own version of the character in Samantha Song, a harried writer at a Singaporean public relations firm who embarks on a scheme with a close friend and a very handsome

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48:14

John D. Hosler, "Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/02/16

When the armies of the Rashidun Caliphate entered Jerusalem in 638, the city was quite different from what it is today–one of the most important cities for three religions. As John Hosler writes in his latest book, Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace (Yale University Press, 2022): “Three things may seem nearly inconceivable to modern readers: that the Temple Mount, a place of such incredible significance and symbolism, once served as Jerusalem’s garbage dump; that it once went wholly

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35:27

Mark Eveleigh, "Kopi Dulu: Caffeine-Fuelled...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/02/09

“Kopi Dulu,” means “coffee first” in Indonesian–a common phrase from Indonesians who are happy to have coffee anywhere, anytime and with anyone. At least, that was Mark Eveleigh’s experience, as a travel writer and reporter, traveling across the country’s many islands. The phrase gives us the title of his latest book: Kopi Dulu: Caffeine-Fuelled Travels Through Indonesia (Penguin Southeast Asia, 2022). Mark travels through Indonesia’s cities and villages, jungles and seas, sharing his experience

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44:48

Angela Hui, "Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/02/02

Food journalist Angela Hui grew up in rural Wales, as daughter to the owners of the Lucky Star Chinese takeaway. Angela grew up behind the counter, helping take orders and serve customers, while also trying to find her place in this small Welsh town. In her new memoir, Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood behind the Counter (Trapeze, 2022), she writes about the surprisingly central role the takeaway plays in rural Britain: Name me one other room where you can blow out birthday candles, watch a live

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41:00

Uther Charlton-Stevens, "Anglo-India and the End of...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/01/26

It can be easy to think of colonies as having two populations: colonial subjects, and colonial overlords from Europe. It’s an easy narrative: one has power, status and privilege, the other does not. But in practice, European colonies created many populations in-between: groups who benefited from imperial power, yet not one of the elite. Britain’s almost two-and-a-half centuries-long presence in India created its own local Eurasian community: the Anglo-Indians, the descendents of marriages between

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40:27

Jeff Fearnside, "Ships in the Desert" (Santa Fe...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/01/19

Many of us have likely seen photos of the Aral Sea, and the rusted Soviet-era ships, sitting in the desert with no water in sight. The Aral Sea is now just 10% of its former volume, shrinking down from what was once the fourth-largest body of inland water in the world, after what writer Jeff Fernside calls “one of the worst human-caused environmental catastrophes.” Jeff traveled to the region as a Peace Corps volunteer. Afterward, he turned his experiences into an essay collection, Ships in the

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39:22

Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/01/12

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India’s ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar’s Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold

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42:24

Ronald H. Spector, "A Continent Erupts:...

Asian Review of Books ·

2023/01/05

On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Yet the Japanese invasion had upended the old geopolitical structures of European empires, leaving old imperial powers on the decline and new groups calling for independence on the rise. That unsteady situation sparked a decade of conflict: in Indonesia, in Vietnam, in China and in Korea, as esteemed military historian Professor Ronald Spector writes about in his latest book, A Continent Erupts:

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42:35

Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi, "Making Meritocracy:...

Asian Review of Books ·

2022/12/29

What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today’s society based on merit. But that simple explanation belies many thorny questions. What is merit? How do we measure talent? How does equality come into play? And how do we ensure that meritocracies don’t degenerate into the same old privileged systems they strived to replace? Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi write in their edited volume Making Meritocracy:

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44:05

John D. Wong, "Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial...

Asian Review of Books ·

2022/12/22

On July 6, 1998, the last flight took off from Kai Tak International Airport, marking the end of an era for Hong Kong aviation. For decades, international flights flew over the roofs of Kowloon apartments, before landing on Kai Tak’s runway, extending out into the harbor. Kai Tak–frankly, a terrible place for one of the world’s busiest international airports–is a good symbol of the story of Hong Kong’s aviation, as told in Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub,

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273 results

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