Q. Let’s start with your Discoveries win. Tell me more about your writing journey up until that point and what shifted for you when you found out you’d won? It’s been a long old journey and when I reflect on the twists and...
by Leila Rasheed Are you an aspiring children’s or young adult fiction writer? Could a year focused on completing a novel, with 1-1 mentoring, workshops and connections to agents and publishers, transform your writing life? If you think...
by Saarah Ismail Growing up my bookshelves were filled with the likes of Jaqueline Wilson, Roald Dahl, Michael Morpurgo and John Green. It never once occurred to me that there was and should be a place for the names of people like me on...
by Fatima Jaffry For South Asian Heritage Month immerse yourself in a literary journey of love. From romance to friendship, these books will leave you warm and fuzzy. So, grab a cup of chai and tuck in. Top pick Kartography by award...
Set in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Tanika Gupta’s The Empress tells the story of the sixteen-year-old Rani Das, ayah (nursemaid) to an English family, who arrives at Tilbury docks after a long voyage...
The London edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival makes its return this month for an inspiring weekend of words, books, music, food and camaraderie (10-11 June). From ‘Bollywood Narratives’ to ‘Letters to a Writer of...
A new festival is putting Panjabi and Pahari-Pothwari voices centre stage. JAAG: Panjabi and Pahari-Pothwari Language and Literature Festival takes place in Birmingham next week (Saturday 13 May). The event, organised by the Jaag...
Aftermath by Preti Taneja has been named the winner of the tenth annual Gordon Burn Prize at Durham Book Festival (13 October). Taneja’s second book Aftermath strives to make sense of the London Bridge terror attack in 2019. Usman...
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka has been named winner of the Booker Prize 2022 (17 October). The author was presented with his trophy by Her Majesty the Queen Consort in a new-look ceremony held at the Roundhouse....
Norman Erikson Pasaribu can light up a room. I remember first meeting him in my hometown of Leicesster where he was – at the time – on tour with the British Council, having been touted as a young Indonesian writer to watch. I...
reviewed by Peter Gordon. Hong Kong is currently going through something of an identity crisis, both literally and figuratively. The literal crisis is the rise of a so-called localist political movement, some proponents of which have...
by Peter Gordon and Juan Jose Morales. Andr de Urdaneta is a name that few other than specialist historians will immediately recognise. He was one of the last of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers and navigators from the...
reviewed by Agnes Bun. There is no faster way to gauge the depth of a well than to drop a stone, and wait for the heavy thud signalling it has reached the bottom.Indian writer Karan Mahajan is more ambitious. In his latest book, he...
reviewed by Peter Gordon. Hong Kongs Sir David Tang has for several years had a column at the Financial Timesanswering reader questions on various matters of modern living, from how to dress for a job interview to (only in Britain) what...
reviewed by Hilton Yip. The drama in JFK Millers tenure as a magazine editor in Shanghai from 2006-2011 came not from deadlines or chasing stories, but official censorship. Six years later, Millers account of this experience isn't so...
reviewed by Kerry Brown. It is a sultry early Autumn day in the central province of Hunan in China, half a century ago in 1967. In a small cluster of villages, remote from the main political centre in Beijing, life revolves around...
reviewed by Theophilus Kwek. From the gangplank of a pre-war steamship to the present, via the jazz underground of 1960s London, Hannah Lowes rewarding second collection revels in the company of an unlikely crew of voices and...
reviewed by Glyn Ford. In 1946, John Hersey published the first account of the horrors that awaited those unlucky enough to survive the bomb in his short Hiroshima. Seventy years on, Susan Southard has done the same for Nagasaki. She...
reviewed by Peter Gordon. Guo Xiaolu has always been a writer who has worn both her heart and her integrity on her sleeve, whether tearing pages from her own life for her novels, experimenting publically with form or writing in what is...
reviewed by Jonathan Chatwin. Richard Kirkbys China memoir Intruder in Maos Realmhas a hint of the nineteenth century about it: frank and scrupulous in recording quotidian detail, it is a refreshingly unrefined book, in the manner of...
A selection of fiction reviews from 2016, highlighting novels, short-story collections and novellas, prize-winners, debuts and classics, works in English and translation.Ghachar Ghocharby Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath PerurLike a...
reviewed by Glyn Ford. Apart from on the Peninsula itself and in the vernacular, the Korean War is framed by a chronology between June 1950 and July 1953. Su-kyoung Hwang's Koreas Grievous Warchallenges that common perception by pushing...
reviewed by Peter Gordon. Jack Weatherford has a clutch of informed, and impassioned, books on the Mongols to his credit. In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, he argued that the Mongols were the precursors of modern...
by Peter Gordon. The good news is that is Musica Vivas four-performance run of Carmenwas completely sold out.* * *George Bizets opera, precisely because it is well-known to the point of being iconic, presents a challenge. It can all too...
reviewed by Peter Gordon. Macau is endlessly fascinating in no small part because it is so anomalous. Dating back to the Age of Exploration, it was the only Iberian possession in East Asia that survived as such into the 20th centuryand...
reviewed by Bill Purves. A century ago China was at the height of its warlord period. The nascent Republic of China had 26 prime ministers in 12 years as one warlord after another gained ascendency in their internecine struggles.Little...
reviewed by Peter Gordon. In The Peoples Money, Chatham Houses Paola Subacchi discusses the internationalization, or relative lack thereof, of the renminbi. The subject can be rather like a room of mirrors if one does not follow...