カテゴリー: Books
Government arts spokesperson Todd Stephenson’s inability to name a New Zealand author for 20 minutes in an interview has rightfully raised eyebrowsPoliticians are used to being asked tough questions – and voters are, by now, used to their stalling in r…
And They Lived … Ever After is a south Asian book of reworked European classics written by women with disabilities A deaf Snow White, a blind Cinderella, a neurodivergent ugly duckling and a wheelchair-using Rapunzel: classic European fairytales have b…
Shah Muhammad Rais was devastated when Taliban destroyed his shop, but now he is sending books to Afghanistan via the internetShah Muhammad Rais first opened his bookshop in the Afghan capital in 1974. By 2003, when his story was made famous by the bes…
Epic new TV adaptation of the 1975 novel reignites interest in the exploits of the Kent sailor William AdamsOn a backstreet in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo, between a seafood wholesaler and a jewellery shop, stands a simple monument. It marks the f…
Early editions of the book of quotations will be sold at an auction of Cultural Revolution artefactsThe Little Red Book, a talisman of 20th-century Maoism, may have fallen out of favour in China after the Cultural Revolution, but its popularity with co…
The Internationalists details how the president was determined to leave a country in which 2,324 US troops were killed since 2001Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new b…
West should address ‘colonisation of the present’ and not focus on past, argues David Van ReybrouckCities in the global north that curb their carbon emissions are doing more to address colonial injustices than those who focus their efforts on taking do…
Akshat Rathi argues that around the world economies are switching to clean technology as prices dropThe root of the climate crisis is “not capitalism but the corruption of capitalism”, according to the author of a new book on how people, policy and tec…
Relocated to north India in 1964, the comic-book class struggle here comes complete with romance and brilliant choreographyOne could be cynical and see this transposition of the Riverdale narrative universe into an Indian setting as just another exerci…
16 October 1953: An account of the Austrian climber’s escape from a British prison in India, crossing the Himalayas to Tibet and becoming a tutor to the Dalai LamaSeven Years in Tibet, By Heinrich Harrer. Hart-Davis. Pp 222, 16s. Tibet and the Tibetans…
Top official sanctions case against Booker prize-winning novelist for comments about Kashmir The Booker prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy could be prosecuted for a 2010 speech about Kashmir after a top official signed off on the move, accordi…
The academic’s discursive, wonderfully enjoyable account of South Asia’s journey from a British colony to three independent nations is a classicThe sudden rise of India over the past few years has taken many western observers by surprise. The Indian ec…
Founded by two translators – one American, one British – the Salt initiative will provide mentorships, funding and a south Asia-focused literary translation schoolA new project to help bring the “extraordinarily rich” literature of south Asia to Englis…
Rooney is among a number of successful western authors who have found a growing audience in China’s restless younger generationWhen the manuscript of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends first arrived in Peng Lun’s inbox, he hesitated. It was 2017…
Six people accused of publishing book relating to 2019 protests in move critics say has spread terrorPolice in Hong Kong have raided a lunar new year shopping fair and arrested six people for selling a “seditious” book related to the 2019 anti-governme…