Web Exclusives - Book Reviews

Colin Barlow | Book Reviews

 

This engrossing work continues Professor Donnithorne’s role as an honest and effective protagonist of China. That brilliant and assiduous scholar has again enhanced our understanding of the country, chronologically recording her life experiences with an insightfulness that makes reading the book highly rewarding.

 
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James Dante | Book Reviews

 

‘We have yellow skin and black hair. We are called the descendants of the dragon,’ Xi Jinping told Donald Trump during the American president’s 2017 visit to Beijing. A Westerner might have trouble deciding whether Xi’s remark was intended as profound or just amusing, but hesitation in the reader’s judgement is part of the ride through this 160-page collection of quotes and excerpts from the mind of China’s current leader.

 
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Julie O`Yang | Book Reviews

 

Ma Jian is one of the sharpest contemporary Chinese writers. Sharp, because his prose is like a Chinese cleaver dripping an aged, black vinegar. In China Dream he portrays the country in a witty, extravagant, and satirical vein. The interaction between the social and the literary, combined with the meanings of dreams, compels the author to compose a bold, two-layered narrative that travels seamlessly between the present and the time of the Cultural Revolution. Ma Jian’s realism is brutal and violent. Nevertheless, despite the cruelty and crudity featured in China Dream, I laughed from page one. 

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ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Review by Kathleen Hwang

IN THE AFTERMATH of the Second World War and the end of Japan’s occupation of Malaysia, Teoh Yun Ling is desperately seeking her own peace. She harbours a deep anger towards the Japanese, who interned her for three years in a labour camp where she lost her youth, her innocence, her sister – and two fingers. She is angry also with herself, for having survived when her sister did not. Her maimed hand is a reminder of deeper scars. 

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ALR Staff | Book Reviews
 

Review by Isabelle Cheung

Luck seldom rears its head in Alexander Khan’s memoir, Orphan of Islam. Khan was raised to be ashamed of his mixed-race heritage, was wilfully deprived of his mother’s love and cruelly abused in an effort to make him into a good Muslim. 

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Kelly Falconer | Book Reviews

 

SET IN MALAYSIA, When All the Lights Are Stripped Away is the engaging story of a young man’s coming of age, his search for his sense of identity and his acceptance of how the past pulls on the present. Divided between his loyalty to the memory of his mother, a painter, and his animosity towards his father, a powerful, influential businessman, Anil drops out of high school and flees his small hometown to Kuala Lumpur soon after his mother’s sudden, accidental death.

 
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ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Review by James E. Hoare

IN A VERY BRIEF TIME, Escape from Camp 14 has become a famous book. This is not surprising. It is well-written and easy to read even if its subject is horrific. Since it began life in the form of a newspaper article, it has been serialized on BBC radio and extracted around the world in a variety of other newspapers. It tells the story of a man now called Shin Dong-hyuk, who lives in Seoul after having spent some time in the United States. But he was formerly Shin In Geum, born in one of the toughest North Korean labour camps where there was no faith, hope or charity, just sheer mind-boggling brutality. Today he has found a sort of peace, recount­ing his story to audiences who listen to his tale with horror... 

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ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Review by Clarissa Sebag Montefiore

Despite all the news coverage, precious little is known about what life is like for those in the so-called ‘Hermit Kingdom’. American author Brandon W. Jones seeks to address the deficiency with his debut All Woman and Springtime. Essentially a coming-of-age tale, the novel follows two young North Korean women as they make the transition from their teenage years to adulthood in the most brutal of circumstances... 

 
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ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

'They say they feed you first because the well-fed ghost is prettier.’ So observes Hyun Woo, the lead character in this novel, as he watches his fellow prisoners being led to the execution chamber. He is serving an eighteen-year sentence for his involvement in the Kwangju Uprising... Review by Lucia Sehui Kim

 
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ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Review by Michael Hoffman

ELLEN THOMAS is a seasoned, award-winning British journalist embedded with British troops in Afghanistan; Jalil had been her ‘turp’ (interpreter). They were friends. He had saved her life, yet she refused to give him a loan that would have allowed him to study engineering in the United States. After he is killed she is remorseful and feels indirectly responsible, and takes it upon herself to find out how he died. 

 
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ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Review by Fionulla McHugh

WITH A Michael Ondaatje book, the images persist long after you’ve forgotten the intricacies of the story: a woman dying within a cave of swimmers in a desert (The English Patient); a young nun falling into the arms of a man building a bridge (In the Skin of a Lion); a truck driver crucified to the tarmac on a Sri Lankan road (Anil’s Ghost). His latest work, The Cat’s Table, includes another image that’s both spectacular and matter-of-fact: a ship passing through the Suez Canal, the demarcation line between Asia and Europe and the journey within a journey at the heart – and the exact mid-point – of this tale of transition.

 
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ko ko thett | Book Reviews

 

‘There are more poets than stray dogs in this country,’ Thitsar Ni, a leader of a Burmese poetic pack was heard to lament at a Yangon teashop. Burma/Myanmar, with its diverse literary and oral traditions, should not surprise you if it brags the highest density on earth of poets per square mile. After all, the Burmese are going through a collective adjustment disorder, known as transition. Besides, you don’t even need pen or paper to be a poet. You just need to utter your poem in the manner of poets of oral traditions and spoken word...

 

ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Visit this page to read some of our archived book reviews.

 

Kelly Falconer | Book Reviews

 

The subtitle of this book is ‘Hong Jun Investigates’, and it’s one of four in a series starring the same protagonist, a lawyer who has returned to Beijing after spending several years studying and working in America...

 

ALR Staff | Book Reviews

 

Cheap labour is a key component of competitiveness for companies striving to make a profit in today’s global market...

 

Alisha Haridasani | Book Reviews

 

From 14 February 1989 onwards, Salman Rushdie did not receive his post directly. Instead, every letter or invitation went to his agency, where it was screened and tested for explosives before a member of his protection team would pick it up and take it to him...

 

Kelly Falconer | Book Reviews

 

THE HERO OF THIS STORY is the eponymous thief, who recounts his life as a pickpocket in Tokyo, and how he moved from petty crime to involvement in a murder. He never tells us his name, and it is pronounced to him only once.

 
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