https://www.scmp.com/rss/10248/feed Bron Sibree is an Australian freelance journalist who has made a successful living writing for various publications in Australia and Asia for more than 20 years. In a former incarnation she was a potter living in remote rural Australia, but traded in the quest for perfection in form for the more elusive, sacred and sometimes profane lure of the written word. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com The Gifts of Reading curated by Jennie Orchard, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 4/5 stars Books, it is often said, are the gifts that never stop giving. And if ever there were a testament to that epithet, it is this inspired and inspiring anthology. Featuring essays from 23 of the world’s most beloved authors, including Michael Ondaatje, Philip Pullman, Jan Morris, Chigozie Obioma, Salley Vickers and Madeleine Thien, this collection, conceived and nurtured in a spirit of altruism, is freighted with such... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3106395/gifts-reading-inspiring-celebration-written-word-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3106395/gifts-reading-inspiring-celebration-written-word-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Oct 2020 07:15:13 +0000 City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong, by Antony Dapiran, Scribe, 4.5/5 stars City on Fire lives up to its publisher’s promise of providing an essential guide to the Hong Kong protests. Its author – writer, lawyer and long-term Hong Kong resident Antony Dapiran – is renowned as a clear-eyed observer of the city’s politics. His 109-page book, City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong (2017), was lauded for its incisive analysis of the “umbrella movement” and the emotions that... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3074466/city-fire-revisits-hong-kongs-2019-protests-and-asks?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3074466/city-fire-revisits-hong-kongs-2019-protests-and-asks?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Mar 2020 03:00:17 +0000 Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now by Joshua Wong, with Jason Y. Ng Penguin Random House 4/5 stars It is tempting to devour this eagerly awaited book from Joshua Wong Chi-fung, the 23-year-old pro-demo­cracy activist and outspoken son of Hong Kong, in quick, greedy gulps. The lucid, no-nonsense prose of Unfree Speech makes it a page-turner. But for all its easy reading – and Wong is quick to credit his translator and co-author, Jason Y. Ng, lawyer, activist,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3047910/unfree-speech-joshua-wong-writes-our-struggle-your?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3047910/unfree-speech-joshua-wong-writes-our-struggle-your?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Jan 2020 23:00:19 +0000 The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company By William Dalrymple Bloomsbury 4/5 stars “Loot”, William Dalrymple writes in his introduction to The Anarchy, is Hindustani slang for “plunder”, and one of the first Indian words to enter the English language. It’s an appropriate word to open this momentous history of what the noted historian calls “the first great multinational corporation, and the first to run amok”. Because loot is what the East India Company did to India for 250... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3027851/anarchy-how-east-india-company-looted-india-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3027851/anarchy-how-east-india-company-looted-india-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Sep 2019 06:15:05 +0000 He goes by a single name. But Habiburahman, better known as Habib, can lay claim to two identities, and at least nine lives. And for most of his 40 years on this Earth he has been stateless – even since 2010, when he was granted refugee status in Australia, where he now lives and works in construc­tion in Melbourne. But you won’t find him complaining about the eight years he has clocked up waiting for an Australian protection visa. “There are many worse off than me,” says Habib of his fellow... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3021909/rohingya-refugee-documents-decades-horrors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3021909/rohingya-refugee-documents-decades-horrors?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Aug 2019 02:45:09 +0000 The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Timeby Anna Sherman Picador5/5 stars In her haunting, beautiful debut travel narrative, Anna Sherman takes the reader along on her quest to find the bells of old Tokyo, illuminating a lost world hidden in plain sight. These bells tolled the hours in this city long before it became known as Tokyo, and long before Japan was opened up to the West. Sherman, a United States-born, Oxford University-educated classicist, moved to Japan in 2001, and was... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3011352/bells-old-tokyo-writer-examines-japanese-concept-time?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3011352/bells-old-tokyo-writer-examines-japanese-concept-time?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 23 May 2019 10:00:20 +0000 How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee One World 4.5/5 stars In inscribing this novel with a phrase from Margaret Atwood’s 2000 Booker-Prize-winning work, The Blind Assassin, “the best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn’t one,” Singaporean author Jing-Jing Lee signals vital clues to How We Disappeared. Clues not only to its thematic essence but to its three-stranded, slightly ungainly yet mysterious structure. But not even this meticulous foregrounding prepares the reader for the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3005649/how-we-disappeared-jing-jing-lees-powerful-tale?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3005649/how-we-disappeared-jing-jing-lees-powerful-tale?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Apr 2019 02:30:09 +0000 The Kinship of Secretsby Eugenia Kim Bloomsbury In a poignant afterword to The Kinship of Secrets, Korean-American author Eugenia Kim describes the Korean war as having been not only the fifth deadliest conflict in human history, but also “the forgotten war”. Asian-American’s debut novel depicts Chinese sisters’ solidarity In this gentle historical saga, her second to date, Kim opens a window onto the conflict through the story of a Korean family torn apart by war but brought together by love,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2181351/kinship-secrets-true-tale-sisters-separated-korean-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2181351/kinship-secrets-true-tale-sisters-separated-korean-war?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Jan 2019 13:03:47 +0000 Hello, Shadowlands by Patrick Winn Icon ★★★★★ Non-fiction books about organised crime have a particularly loyal band of readers. With a few exceptions (Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah [2006], Ioan Grillo’s El Narco [2011]), I haven’t enjoyed many of them. But Patrick Winn’s Hello, Shadowlands is so addictive that it has me chasing down everything else he has written. Subtitled Inside the Meth Fiefdoms, Rebel Hideouts and Bomb-Scarred Party Towns of Southeast Asia, this page-turner is as much an... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2156090/human-side-southeast-asias-criminal-underbelly-exposed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2156090/human-side-southeast-asias-criminal-underbelly-exposed?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Jul 2018 10:00:15 +0000 The Good Sonby You-jeong Jeong Little, Brown “The smell of blood woke me,” says Yu-jin, the 25-year-old narrator of The Good Son. As he lies in his bloodied bed, raking over aspects of his life, including his childhood prowess as a competitive swimmer and his incomplete memories of the night before, he believes he is experiencing hallucinations as a result of not taking his medication. Suicide, murder and sexual desire pervade Tokyo’s bars in smart, sinister thriller He is jolted fully awake at... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2146518/murder-and-dark-side-human-psyche-explored-intense?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2146518/murder-and-dark-side-human-psyche-explored-intense?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 18 May 2018 02:15:00 +0000 The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton Hamish Hamilton The Shepherd’s Hut, by Australian writer Tim Winton, is a hymn to hard-won hope. It is also a novel that rejects convention and complacency from the opening, with the words of its teenage narrator: “When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth gray rumble going under me everything’s hell different. You’d think I’d never got in a car before. But when you’ve hoofed it like a dirty goat all these weeks and months, when you’ve had the stony, slow... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2142383/tim-wintons-harrowing-novel-shepherds-hut-poetic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2142383/tim-wintons-harrowing-novel-shepherds-hut-poetic?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Apr 2018 04:45:15 +0000 Political Tribes: Group Instinct and The Fate Of Nations by Amy Chua Bloomsbury 3.5 stars “In our foreign policy, for at least half a century,” Amy Chua writes of her homeland, America, in the introduction to her new and fifth book, Political Tribes, “we have been spectacularly blind to the power of tribal politics.” Why tiger mum Amy Chua may have it wrong about how to raise successful children This statement will no doubt find little argument among non-US citizens. But there’s more to... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2134399/amy-chua-us-blindness-identity-politics-abroad-and-home-vietnam?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2134399/amy-chua-us-blindness-identity-politics-abroad-and-home-vietnam?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Feb 2018 13:00:16 +0000 The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-yi Text Publishing Wu Ming-yi’s profoundly moving fifth novel uses an obsession with antique bicycles to journey deep into Taiwan’s 20th-century history. The book by the Taiwanese author, literature professor, butterfly scholar, artist and environmental activist is only the second of his acclaimed works to be translated into English, and won rave reviews in Taiwan – and the Taiwan Literary Award – following its Chinese-language release in 2016. The Stolen Bicycle,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2110838/stolen-bicycle-wu-ming-yi-expertly-weaves-narrative?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2110838/stolen-bicycle-wu-ming-yi-expertly-weaves-narrative?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Sep 2017 03:15:00 +0000 Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash by Eka Kurniawan Pushkin Press Eka Kurniawan first ignited international interest in 2015, with the English translation of his 2004 novel, Man Tiger. By the time it hit the Man Booker Prize longlist in 2016, the first novel by an Indonesian author to do so, he had been likened to Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie, and pronounced the heir to Indonesian literary icon Pramoedya Ananta Toer. But if critics were ecstatic in their praise of Man Tiger ,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2103229/eka-kurniawans-brutal-novel-indonesian-masculinity-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2103229/eka-kurniawans-brutal-novel-indonesian-masculinity-not?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 Jul 2017 09:15:15 +0000 Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-yong Scribe Nothing prepares the reader for the strange, otherworldly beauty and heartbreaking sadness of this novel by Hwang Sok-yong, arguably South Korea’s most renowned author. Familiar Things opens with a slow, measured, wide-angled sweep. It lingers over images of a sunset before slowly zooming in on a rubbish truck racing along a riverside expressway, and then a young boy who is standing in the back of the truck. It’s as if Hwang is urging us to look at the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2095623/heartbreak-and-otherworldly-beauty-koreas-most-famous?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2095623/heartbreak-and-otherworldly-beauty-koreas-most-famous?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 25 May 2017 04:45:00 +0000 In the Land of Giants: Hunting Monsters in the Hindu Kush by Gabi Martinez Scribe “Some stories are hard to believe, and this is one of them,” writes lauded Spanish author Gabi Martinez near the start of In the Land of Giants, his 11th book and an inspired telling of an uncommon story. It’s a story that is fable-like in its outlines, yet unmistakably grounded in some of the harsher realities of our times. Indeed, from the outset, writes Martinez, there was “something marvel­lous” about this... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2088549/murder-sex-and-obsession-trail-slain-spanish-zoologist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2088549/murder-sex-and-obsession-trail-slain-spanish-zoologist?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 Apr 2017 08:45:30 +0000 The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen Grove Press In an opinion piece in The New York Times following the release of his 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, The Sympathizer , Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen describes himself as a refugee, rather than an immigrant. “Refugees,” he wrote, “are the zombies of the world, the undead who rise from dying states to march or swim toward our borders in endless waves.” So it’s perhaps no surprise that he should inscribe his debut collection of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2068464/viet-thanh-nguyens-short-story-collection-refugees?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2068464/viet-thanh-nguyens-short-story-collection-refugees?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Feb 2017 23:02:22 +0000 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee Grand Central Publishing “History has failed us, but no matter.” So begins Korean-American author Min Jin Lee’s gripping new novel about a chapter largely ignored in English literature: the Koreans in Japan. It is only as the reader approaches the end of the novel that the momentous historical weight and narrative ambition of this enigmatic opening hit home. Within a few scant sentences, Lee transports us directly into the joys and vicissi­tudes of an ageing fisherman and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2060927/min-jin-lees-epic-pachinko-takes-complex-and-fraught?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2060927/min-jin-lees-epic-pachinko-takes-complex-and-fraught?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Jan 2017 00:03:54 +0000 The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton Hamish Hamilton/Picador It’s difficult to think of a memoir so appropriately titled as this unusually shaped – and unusually compel­ling – mid-life offering from Australian author Tim Winton. It takes both its title and its cues from the honest, searching opening chapter, in which the author of acclaimed novels such as Eyrie (2013), Breath (2008), Cloudstreet (1991) and the Booker Prize-shortlisted Dirt Music (2001) and The Riders (1994), recalls himself... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2039539/book-review-tim-wintons-compelling-midlife-memoir?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2039539/book-review-tim-wintons-compelling-midlife-memoir?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 24 Oct 2016 09:19:36 +0000 Do Not Say We Have Nothing By Madeleine Thien Granta There is a moment early in Madeleine Thien’s extraordinary new novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, when one of the characters, Ai-ming, recalls how, whenever she begged her grandmother to recount a lengthy bedtime story, she had thought life would be the same afterwards. “But it wasn’t true. As the stories got longer and longer, I got smaller and smaller.” Her grandmother, an outspoken woman with a fierce temper, a wrestler’s shoulders and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/1995602/book-review-family-saga-relives-horrors-modern-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/1995602/book-review-family-saga-relives-horrors-modern-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 Jul 2016 11:02:04 +0000 Ruins by Rajith Savanadasa Hachette “This family is good. That’s why I work for them. Aiya doesn’t know because Aiya hasn’t seen.” The mysterious thoughts of a worried servant in a Sri Lankan household open Rajith Savanadasa’s cogently written, cleverly conceived debut novel, Ruins. Latha is the first of five narrators who tell the story of a family, and a country, picking up the pieces in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s bloody 26-year civil war. The book begins before the end of the conflict, just... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/1989743/book-review-ruins-haunting-debut-about-family-secrets?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/1989743/book-review-ruins-haunting-debut-about-family-secrets?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 15 Jul 2016 04:03:25 +0000 The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam Text Publishing/Canongate Books 4.5/5 stars Nothing about The Bones of Grace, the third in Tahmima Anam’s loose trilogy of novels about her native Bangladesh, plays out in predictable or humdrum ways. A novel of unusual, uneven beauty, heart-wrenching sadness and rare imaginative power, it is a timely reminder of why this Dhaka-born novelist and anthropologist is a judge of this year’s Man Booker International Prize, and also why Granta included her on its 2013... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1945647/book-review-bones-grace-uneven-beauty-heart-wrenching-sadness-and-rare?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1945647/book-review-bones-grace-uneven-beauty-heart-wrenching-sadness-and-rare?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 May 2016 04:34:37 +0000 British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore enjoys a formidable reputation as an expert on Russia thanks to string of bestselling, award winning Russia related historical works, including Catherine the Great & Potemkin – which is to be made into a film by Angelina Jolie – Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and Young Stalin. His most recent historical work, Jerusalem: the Biography – which topped bestseller lists in more than 40 countries – also revealed much about Russia and its long-held desire to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1902816/decline-and-fall-russian-empire?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1902816/decline-and-fall-russian-empire?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 19 Jan 2016 10:00:45 +0000 If the Second Iron Age was going to yield its desiccated secrets to any 21st century novelist, then who better than Geraldine Brooks? The US-based, Australian-born foreign correspondent turned author has long been feted for her ability to animate the forgotten corners of history in such bestselling novels as Year of Wonders, People of the Book, Caleb's Crossing and, not least, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from 2005, March. But raking over the bones of the biblical King David, a figure... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1861299/book-review-geraldine-brooks-brilliantly-portrays-biblical-king?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1861299/book-review-geraldine-brooks-brilliantly-portrays-biblical-king?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Sep 2015 15:05:45 +0000 David Lagercrantz  was acclaimed as one of Sweden’s bestselling authors long before he was contracted to write the fourth  instalment in the Millennium  series about Lisbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Created by his fellow countryman and journalist Stieg Larsson,  the series became a global publishing phenomenon after Larsson’s death in 2004,  selling in excess of 80 million copies. Lagercrantz began his career as a crime reporter and was chosen by Swedish publisher Norstedts  –... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1855216/david-lagercrantz-his-passion-add-stieg-larssons-millennium-series?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1855216/david-lagercrantz-his-passion-add-stieg-larssons-millennium-series?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 04 Sep 2015 04:15:45 +0000 Not interested in motherhood? Are not yet or never will be a parent? Read on because this book takes you deep into modern motherhood. That is to be expected from Antonella Gambotto-Burke - an occasional contributor to the Post - who is renowned for probing issues such as suicide, addiction, sexuality and celebrity culture. Part memoir, part reportage, part social analysis, Mama, her sixth book, is shaped around her conversations with 10 experts, who echo her theme that our lack of respect for... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1831948/book-review-mama-passionate-salute-motherhood?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1831948/book-review-mama-passionate-salute-motherhood?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Jul 2015 13:30:00 +0000 To read The Green Road, Anne Enright's eighth work of fiction, is to understand why the Booker Prize-winning author was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction this year. Readers will almost flinch at its brutal honesty even as they marvel at its acute perceptions as it transports you ever deeper into the fragile fissures of family, love and the human heart. Taking its title from the road that runs through Burren in County Clare in Enright's native Ireland, the novel is shaped in two... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1806854/book-review-anne-enrights-green-road-flinchingly-honest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1806854/book-review-anne-enrights-green-road-flinchingly-honest?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 May 2015 14:52:58 +0000 In her debut family memoir, Forged from Silver Dollar, Li Feng has written a harrowing, yet inspiring account of four generations of Chinese women. In giving voice to the extraordinary tribulations and triumphs of her maternal ancestors, Li also gives fresh insight into the painful birth pangs of modern China. Born in 1969, Li grew up in Sichuan province with her family's matriarchal motto, "No failure, only success" drummed into her at every turn. In her 20s, she rebelled against her mother's... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1797844/interview-li-feng-her-harrowing-account-chinese-womens-struggles?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1797844/interview-li-feng-her-harrowing-account-chinese-womens-struggles?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 May 2015 15:10:59 +0000 Reckless by Hasan Ali Toptas Bloomsbury It is perhaps not surprising that Hasan Ali Toptas has been hailed by the media in Germany as "the Kafka of Turkish literature". A profound sense of menace, beauty and the surreal pervades his latest novel, Reckless, which has now been translated into English by John Angliss and author Maureen Freely, who has translated five of Orhan Pamuk's novels. This masterful translation is a belated introduction to English-language readers of the novels of Toptas,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1775263/book-review-reckless-hasan-ali-toptas-tangled-web-memory-and-dream?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1775263/book-review-reckless-hasan-ali-toptas-tangled-web-memory-and-dream?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Apr 2015 11:11:35 +0000 Scottish author Andrew O'Hagan earned a reputation for blurring the boundaries between memoir, journalism and the literary genre with his debut non-fiction work, The Missing , in 1995 - along with shortlistings for the Booker prize, the Whitbread Award and the IMPAC Award. Since then he has cemented his reputation as one of his generation's most exciting writers with such disparate novels as Our Fathers , Personality , Be Near Me and The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1730807/interview-andrew-ohagan-his-fifth-novel-illuminations?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1730807/interview-andrew-ohagan-his-fifth-novel-illuminations?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Mar 2015 12:30:44 +0000 The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream by Katharine Norbury Bloomsbury That rare book that works its way into your very marrow in unforeseen and magical ways, The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream has been described variously as an example of "new nature writing", a memoir cum travelogue, and "a portrait of a motherhood and a hymn to the adoptive family". But Katharine Norbury's debut non-fiction work manages to avoid all the usual moorings of genre and form on its uniquely original journey... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1724851/book-review-fish-ladder-grieving-mother-journeys-rivers-sources?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1724851/book-review-fish-ladder-grieving-mother-journeys-rivers-sources?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Feb 2015 15:12:10 +0000 Nora Webster by Colm Toibin Picador   Irish novelist Colm Toibin's new novel, Nora Webster, transports the reader into the mind of its title character with such immediacy that one can almost feel her holding her breath as neighbour Tom O'Connor says: "You must be fed up of them. Will they never stop coming?" He is, we discover, referring to the endless procession of visitors that come to her Enniscorthy home in Ireland's County Wexford each night, offering polite condolences in the wake of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1629065/book-review-nora-webster-colm-toibin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1629065/book-review-nora-webster-colm-toibin?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Nov 2014 15:11:26 +0000 The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell Sceptre To enter any one of David Mitchell's acclaimed novels is to enter an ornate Chinese puzzle. But once you venture into the world of his sixth novel, The Bone Clocks - and the vast labyrinth concealed within - you won't want to leave. When you finally do, you won't see our contemporary world in quite the same way again. This transformative, 600-page genre-bending novel - which is arguably the most hungrily anticipated book of the year and was... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1585872/book-review-bone-clocks-david-mitchell?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1585872/book-review-bone-clocks-david-mitchell?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Sep 2014 14:12:10 +0000 Mira Jacob's beguiling and darkly comic debut novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing has already drawn early comparisons with the work of literary superstar Jhumpa Lahiri. Both write about the immigrant Indian experience in America and both deal expertly in family dysfunction. But that's where the comparison ends. Unlike Lahiri, who is particularly adroit at evoking the underlying unhappiness of her Bengali characters in plain, unadorned prose, Jacob's account of a south Indian family and the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1554580/debut-novel-examines-indian-immigrant-experience?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1554580/debut-novel-examines-indian-immigrant-experience?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Jul 2014 01:39:25 +0000 Kamila Shamsie has been garnering accolades ever since her debut novel, In the City by the Sea, in 1998, aged 25. Since then the Pakistani-born Britain-based novelist and columnist has written four more acclaimed novels, including her Orange Prize-shortlisted 2009 novel Burnt Shadows . In 2013, Shamsie was named one of Granta 's top 20 British writers. She is renowned for tackling pressing political questions in her fiction, which has been translated into 20 languages. Her sixth novel, A God in... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1546516/novel-retrieves-forgotten-memory-massacre-pakistan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1546516/novel-retrieves-forgotten-memory-massacre-pakistan?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Jul 2014 09:13:59 +0000 Lost for Words by Edward St Aubyn Picador  4.5 stars If there's anything Edward St Aubyn's eighth novel is not, it is lost for words. The work dazzles with its verbal dexterity and, it must be said, toys wickedly, cleverly, with the notion that words can be made to do anything, but in the end can amount to nothing. But then which novel written by St Aubyn, author of the superb Melrose series, hasn't elicited delight and wonder with its verbal virtuosity? Hailed as Britain's greatest living... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1502523/clever-wordplay-skewers-modern-manners-and-obsessions?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1502523/clever-wordplay-skewers-modern-manners-and-obsessions?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 May 2014 06:00:45 +0000 Italian journalist and author Andrea di Robilant reached across the centuries to bring history alive in acclaimed works of non-fiction such as A Venetian Affair , Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon and Venetian Navigators . But his new book, Chasing the Rose , is a charming account of his quest to trace a mysterious rose. Along the way, he travels to China and the world of old and "orphaned roses", encountering rose collectors, chasers, breeders, botanists, scientists and nurserymen,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1476100/book-shows-why-collectors-are-hot-scent-roses?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1476100/book-shows-why-collectors-are-hot-scent-roses?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 13 Apr 2014 08:00:30 +0000 Tim Cope was a little known 25-year-old Australian adventurer when he set out on his 10,000-kilometre journey across the Eurasian steppe on horseback, retracing the hoof-steps of Mongol warrior Genghis Khan. However, his trip has gone down in history as one of the most epic journeys of the modern age. Accompanied by three horses and a dog, Cope set out from Kharkorin, the ancient capital of Mongolia, in 2004, armed with little but his fluency in the Russian language. By the time he reached... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1319077/travelling-hoofprints-great-mongol-empire?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1319077/travelling-hoofprints-great-mongol-empire?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri Bloomsbury 4.5 stars When Jhumpa Lahiri's second novel, The Lowland, was long-listed for the 2013 Booker Prize before it had even been released, nobody was exactly surprised. Lahiri, a 46-year-old Bengali-American writer, is one of those rare talents who seems to do no wrong on the page. In 1999, she became one of the youngest authors ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, and her two subsequent books, debut... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1309044/love-loss-and-grip-past?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1309044/love-loss-and-grip-past?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 New Delhi-born, Toronto-based author Jaspreet Singh's eagerly awaited second novel, Helium, is rather unusual, disturbingly beautiful and somewhat angry. In some senses, it bears many of the hallmarks of Singh's lauded 2009 debut novel, Chef, which used a dying cook and the icy terrain of the Siachen glacier to examine the bloody India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir. An emotionally distant narrator, haunting memories and a contested history - as well as an acknowledged debt to W.G Sebald - are... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1255634/book-lead-helium-jaspreet-singh?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1255634/book-lead-helium-jaspreet-singh?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Your latest novel, The Watch, uses the plot of Sophocles' Antigone to bring home the human costs of the conflict in Afghanistan. How did it come about? It goes back to the second year that President Barack Obama was in office and he had just announced the amping up of troop levels in Afghanistan. I had a couple of very good friends over to dinner, both of whom teach at a local university, and I was having a difficult time trying to make them understand what that meant in Afghanistan, that it was... https://www.scmp.com/article/1004191/good-bad-and-ugly-both-sides-fence?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1004191/good-bad-and-ugly-both-sides-fence?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Canada by Richard Ford Bloomsbury There's a quiet but unmistakable sense of majesty about this novel, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford's first in six years. A potent sense of something vast and mythic yet ultimately unfathomable, both in terms of the physical terrain of Saskatchewan and Montana where the novel is set, and of the human heart. Of borders and crossings and transgressions. Of possibilities and becomings and undoings. Even its opening sentences, 'First, I'll tell you about the... https://www.scmp.com/article/1002031/alone-wasteland?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1002031/alone-wasteland?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo Bloomsbury El Narco is essential reading for those wishing to understand how a violent criminal insurgency can take root in an advanced country with a trillion-dollar economy, several world-class companies and 11 billionaires. But this is not a book for the faint-hearted: Ioan Grillo's spellbinding account of the drug-cartel-fuelled violence that threatens to engulf Mexico brings the reader uncomfortably close to the rivers of blood... https://www.scmp.com/article/996498/war-zone?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/996498/war-zone?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Cairo: My City, Our Revolution by Ahdaf Soueif Bloomsbury This beautifully written, often hastily detailed, account of Egypt's 18-day revolution has the urgent, almost breathless tone of a modern-day Scheherazade, telling stories as a way of warding off death or disaster. As Ahdaf Soueif, one of the most prominent Arab authors writing in English today, confides in her introduction to the book: 'I wanted it to be an intervention, rather than just a record.' She reminds us repeatedly as she... https://www.scmp.com/article/995798/between-hope-and-fear-view-behind-barricades?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/995798/between-hope-and-fear-view-behind-barricades?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo, whose Harry Hole series has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, talks to Bron Sibree How do you explain the astonishing success of Harry Hole? Honestly I have no idea and I'm not sure whether I want to analyse it. I think that the risk is that you'd become self-conscious about what you're doing, or might start focusing on 'Okay, what is the formula here?' I have to stay truthful to the storyline and to the logic of the characters, and that means... https://www.scmp.com/article/993048/harry-hell-bent-and-readers-love-going-along-ride?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/993048/harry-hell-bent-and-readers-love-going-along-ride?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Opium Nation by Fariba Nawa Harper Perennial In her prologue to this gripping narrative, veteran American-Afghan journalist and author Fariba Nawa describes the mixture of 'aching nostalgia and lingering survivor's guilt' that first drew her back to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2000. It is this potent emotional mix that compels her to return again and again to Afghanistan, the land she fled at the age of nine, together with her parents, during the Soviet occupation. She eventually moves to... https://www.scmp.com/article/989512/lost-souls-inside-afghanistans-graft-riddled-narco-state?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/989512/lost-souls-inside-afghanistans-graft-riddled-narco-state?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:00:00 +0000 The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides Fourth Estate In what must go down as one of the most compelling opening paragraphs of a novel written in recent times, The Marriage Plot connects the reader directly with the mindset of its bookish female protagonist, Madeleine Hanna, and with the audacious literary intent of its author in one fell swoop. 'To start with,' urges the omniscient narrator of Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited third novel, 'look at all the books. There were her Edith Wharton... https://www.scmp.com/article/980686/love-books-and-other-passions?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/980686/love-books-and-other-passions?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The Honoured Dead by Joseph Braude Spiegel & Grau Part memoir, part murder mystery and part investigation of contemporary Arab cultures, The Honoured Dead: A True Story of Friendship, Murder and the Underbelly of the Arab World is that rare hybrid that lives up to the promise of its title and delivers more besides. It grew out of Joseph Braude's four months with Casablanca's judicial police in 2008. The first Westerner to be embedded with an Arab security force, Braude's ability to penetrate... https://www.scmp.com/article/978022/us-spook-treads-religio-racial-fault-lines-modern-morocco?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/978022/us-spook-treads-religio-racial-fault-lines-modern-morocco?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Tea Obreht's first taste of literary celebrity came last June when she was named by The New Yorker as one of the 20 best American fiction writers under 40 on the strength of a handful of short stories. But the fanfare that ensued was nothing to compare with the international scrutiny that's been directed toward the 25-year-old author since her debut novel about the Balkans, The Tiger's Wife, hit global bookshelves. It reached a new level of intensity on June 8 when she became the youngest... https://www.scmp.com/article/970992/tigers-tale-burns-bright-talented-balkan-novelist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/970992/tigers-tale-burns-bright-talented-balkan-novelist?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Justin Cartwright is renowned for writing serious literary novels that tap into the zeitgeist. But with his 12th novel, Other People's Money, the South African-born British novelist has not only penned a state-of-the nation novel but a canny comedy of manners. Literary critics have scarce been able to contain themselves in extolling the delights of this novel, which satirises Britain's slide into recession on bad bank loans and toxic mortgages. Yet the only person surprised at its irresistible... https://www.scmp.com/article/969042/comedy-human-touch-midst-banking-crisis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/969042/comedy-human-touch-midst-banking-crisis?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 May 2011 16:00:00 +0000