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PODCAST

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

36:55

Harini Nagendra, "Into the Leopard's Den: A Bangalore...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/11/06

Into the Leopard’s Den (Pegasus / Hachette India: 2025), the latest novel in the Bangalore Detective Club series by Harini Nagendra, opens with a home invasion gone wrong: An elderly woman in 1920s India, murdered by a mystery assailant during a robbery. Kaveri Murthy, amateur detective, takes on the case–and soon uncovers a whole array of other mysteries in the coffee plantations of Coorg: a ghost leopard stalking the woods, and a series of murder attempts against a widely-disliked colonial

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38:33

Stephen C. Mercado, "Japanese Spy Gear and Special...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/10/30

War, and the threat of war, spurs governments to invest in secret military technologies and weapons. Imperial Japan, ahead of the Second World War, was no exception. After the First World War, Japan set up the Noborito Research Institute: a division of scientists and technicians to invest in overt and clandestine warfare.Stephen Mercado dives into this history in his new book Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons: How Noborito’s Scientists and Technicians Served in the Second World War and the

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45:42

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/10/23

Begum Wilayat Mahal, the self-proclaimed heir to the House of Awadh, has fascinated journalists and writers for decades. She claimed she was Indian royalty, descended from the kings of Awadh, a kingdom annexed by the British in 1856. She spent a decade in the waiting room of the New Delhi train station, receiving journalists intrigued by the image of Indian royals in cramped conditions. Then, her family was granted use of a rundown 14th-century hunting lodge in Delhi; none were seen in public

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43:42

Moudhy Al-Rashid, "Between Two Rivers: Ancient...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/10/16

In 1923, archaeologist Leonard Woolley stumbled upon a room that dated back to 530BC, the time of the Babylonians. Oddly, the room was filled with artifacts that were thousands of years older. A clay drum led Woolley to speculate that he might have stumbled across the world’s first museum.Whether that was really the case is still somewhat unknown. But this room is the inspiration behind Moudhy Al-Rashid’s book Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History (W.W. Norton /

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44:25

Jemimah Wei, "The Original Daughter"...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/10/09

Genevieve Yang, the protagonist of Jemimah Wei’s debut novel The Original Daughter (Doubleday/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2025) works a dead-end job in Singapore, living in the shadow of her adopted younger sister, Arin, a rising movie star. Genevieve’s dying mother asks her to call Arin; Genevieve refuses.Jemimah’s novel then teases out the history of Gen and Arin’s sibling relationship, from their first meeting in the late 90s, through their shared experience in school, to the final grievance that

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57:35

Erin M.B. O'Halloran, "East of Empire: Egypt, India,...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/10/02

Between the First and Second World Wars, activists across the British Empire began to think about what their homes might look like as independent nations, rather than colonies subject to the control of London.Sometimes, these thinkers found refuge and common cause in others elsewhere in the Empire–such as between India and Egypt, , as Erin O’Halloran explores in her book East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World Between the Wars (Stanford UP, 2025). India was the jewel in the British Empire’s

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52:09

Rosinka Chaudhuri, "India's First Radicals: Young...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/09/25

In 1831, the India Gazette wrote about a group of radical young thinkers that it credited for an upheaval in social and religious politics in Calcutta. These were the Young Bengal, the proteges of Henry Derozio of Hindu College. These thinkers, according to Rosinka Chaudhuri, were India’s first radicals, trying to reshape Indian politics as it came under the sway of the East India Company and the British Empire.Rosinka joins the show to talk about her book India’s First Radicals: Young

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47:28

Charles R. Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths, "Before...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/09/18

Today’s international system is made up of states: Territorial entities with defined borders, with exclusive control within those borders, diplomatic recognition by other states outside of them and usually (though not always) tied to some idea of the “nation.”But how many states have existed throughout history, such as during the nineteenth century? Some early counts put the number at just a few dozen–a measure that international relations professors Charles R. Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths

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51:23

Wu Jianren, "New Story of the Stone: An Early Chinese...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/09/11

What happens if you took one of the classic characters of Chinese literary fiction and dropped him into early 20th-century China?That’s the premise of Wu Jianren’s novel, New Story of the Stone (Columbia UP, 2025), written in 1905, which takes Jia Baoyu, from the classic Dream of the Red Chamber, and takes him first to Qing China and the Boxer Rebellion, and then to the fantastical “Realm of Civilization,” a world that, in Wu’s eyes, reflected what he thought would happen if people embraced

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53:25

Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/09/04

Partition—the rapid, uncoordinated, and bloody split between India and Pakistan after the Second World War—remains the central event of South Asian history. But 1947 wasn’t the only partition, according to historian and filmmaker Sam Dalrymple.Sam, in his book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins, 2025), notes that “British India” once spanned all the way from the Arabian Peninsula to the border with Thailand, covering South Arabia, South Asia and Burma

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42:03

Tracy Slater, "Together in Manzanar: The True Story...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/08/28

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced Executive Order 9066, which authorized the confinement of tens of thousands of Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in the Western U.S., sending them to cramped, hastily-constructed camps like Manzanar and Amache. One such Japanese-American was Karl Yoneda, a well-known labor activist–and the husband of Elaine Yoneda, a Jewish-American woman. Elaine soon followed her husband to the Manzanar camp, after authorities threatened to send

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29:38

Nan Z. Da, The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/08/21

I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region.King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, starts with Lear dividing up his kingdom between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Goneril and Regan win the kingdom through flattery, Cordelia’s honesty is rewarded with exile.That opening–and the other developments in Lear’s

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44:10

Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/08/14

I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region.How do you tell the story of India–not just the modern-day country, but the whole region of South Asia, home to over two billion people? Historian Audrey Truschke’s newest book, India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Princeton UP, 2025), starts at the very beginning: the rise of the

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49:03

Eiko Maruko Siniawer, "Ten Moments that Shaped Tokyo"...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/08/07

How did Tokyo—Japan’s capital, global city, tourist hotspot and financial center—get to where it is today? Tokyo–or then, Edo–had a rather unglamorous start, as a backwater on Japan’s eastern coast before Tokugawa decided to make it his de facto capital.Eiko Maruko Siniawer picks ten distinct moments in Edo’s, and then Tokyo’s, history to show how this village became one of the world’s most important cities. Moments like a brief crackdown on kabuki theater, or the opening ceremony of the 2020

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46:06

Aatish Taseer, "A Return to Self: Excursions in...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/07/31

In 2019, famed journalist and writer Aatish Taseer was thrown out of India. Soon after he wrote a cover article for Time calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi the country’s “divider in chief,” New Delhi decided to revoke his residency.That sent Aatish on a journey across the world–to places like Turkey, Spain, Mexico and Sri Lanka–to explore identity, both his own and of different nations. The result is his latest book, A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile (Catapult: 2025). Aatish is the author

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42:50

Sanjena Sathian, "Goddess Complex" (Penguin Press, 2025)

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/07/24

Sanjana Satyananda, the main character of Sanjena Sathian’s novel, Goddess Complex (Penguin Press, 2025), is a bit of a mess. She’s back in the States after a spell in India, ending her marriage with her actor husband when he wanted kids…and she didn’t. Her friends are starting to settle down–and wondering when Sanjana will do the same. And, distressingly, others in her life swear they’ve seen her back in India, still married to her husband, and happily pregnant.This question–who is the woman

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41:49

James D.J. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/07/17

The Russians came late to Japan, arriving after the Portuguese and other European powers. But as soon as they arrived, Russia tried to use spies and espionage to learn more about their neighbor—with various degrees of success. Sometimes, it failed miserably, like Russia’s early attempts to make contact with pre-Meiji Japan, or the debacle during the Russo-Japanese War. Other times, they were wildly successful, like during the Battle of Khalkin Gol or with Richard Sorge’s spy ring during the Second

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61:39

Paul French, "Destination Macao" (Blacksmith Books,...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/07/10

Macau–onetime Portuguese colony, now casino hotspot–has long captured the imaginations of travelers, reporters, artists and writers. The city served as the only gateway to China for centuries; then, after the rise of Hong Kong, its slightly seedier vibe made it a popular setting for books, articles and movies exploring the more criminal elements of society.Paul French joins us, once again, to talk about his new book Destination Macao (Blacksmith Books: 2024) the latest book in his Destination

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46:54

Zev Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the...

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/07/03

For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chinese. In southern China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, people used Chinese to read and write–and never thought it was odd. It was, after all, how things were done.Even today, Cantonese speakers use Chinese characters to reflect their dialect with no issues, while kanji remains a key part of Japanese writing. Even in South Korea, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper

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37:13

Naomi Xu Elegant, "Gingko Season: A Novel" (W. W....

Asian Review of Books ·

2025/06/26

Naomi Xu Elegant’s debut novel, Gingko Season (W. W. Norton: 2025), stars Penelope Lin, a young Chinese woman living in New York in the faraway year of 2018. With difficult parents and a bad break-up, she works for a museum’s exhibition on bound feet, with a gaggle of other, somewhat clueless friends. But a meeting with Hoang, a researcher at a cancer lab, forces Penelope to rethink what she wants with her life.Naomi joins me today to talk about her book, her choice of characters, how she wanted

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