https://www.scmp.com/rss/507610/feed Bernard Cohen is an award-winning novelist, based in Sydney, Australia. He is also Director of The Writing Workshop, and has taught creative writing to 100,000 young people. His latest book is the short story collection When I Saw the Animal (UQP). en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen Long before the current manifestations of the metaverse, there was Second Life. Established as a virtual and collaborative space in 2003, Second Life had millions of visitors and, according to its developers, Linden Lab, an economy running into billions of US dollars. Since 2019 it has even had its own currency, the Linden Dollar. In Second Life’s heyday, around 2006, films launched, law schools ran courses, multinational corporations opened branches, huge events took place, commercial and... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3295938/inside-beijing-based-artist-cao-feis-virtual-worlds-my-city-yours-exhibition-sydney?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3295938/inside-beijing-based-artist-cao-feis-virtual-worlds-my-city-yours-exhibition-sydney?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Jan 2025 08:15:08 +0000 Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen Grass sways to the movements of Martian winds, a woman sits in a launderette she’s never visited speaking words she never said, 2,000 drones move in harmony to “paint” the Los Angeles sky, an artist through experimentation recovers ancient, traditional skills of cochineal dyeing, a Hong Kong amateur qigong practitioner seeks connection of human and plant energy matter. Launched in September, “PST ART: Art and Science Collide”, which includes these extra­ordinary moments, is “the largest art... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3287564/inside-biggest-art-event-us-featuring-over-800-artists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3287564/inside-biggest-art-event-us-featuring-over-800-artists?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 21 Nov 2024 23:15:08 +0000 Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen Waste Tide author Chen Qiufan is, he says, a “science-fiction realist”. He has borrowed the term from Zheng Wenguang, eulogised as the father of Chinese science fiction, but his writing approach has as much in common with the stylish British writer J.G. Ballard, who believed that science fiction should be set not two millennia into the future, but two days. “What interests me most about science fiction,” says Chen, “is how reality can be transformed into a near-futuristic narrative.” The... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3280061/why-chinese-science-fiction-having-more-moment-beyond-netflixs-3-body-problem?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3280061/why-chinese-science-fiction-having-more-moment-beyond-netflixs-3-body-problem?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Sep 2024 23:15:11 +0000 Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen Conversation with a small child: “Time to get dressed.” “Why?” “Because we’re going to visit Nanna.” “Why?” “Because she’s your grandmother and she loves to see you and you love to see her.” “Why?” Perhaps there are adults who might allow a small measure of impatience to enter their tone at about this point, but the flow of monosyllabic questions may well continue, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. Some parenting sites suggest strategies to deflect or stop the whys, such as asking the child a question... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3278426/if-patience-virtue-ai-new-messiah-understands-you-have-be-more-practical-do-anything-let-alone-get?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3278426/if-patience-virtue-ai-new-messiah-understands-you-have-be-more-practical-do-anything-let-alone-get?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Sep 2024 22:15:12 +0000 Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen Who is that image of elegance entering the salon, clothed in a deep charcoal, tailored blazer with a subtle creative touch of intellectual and cultural sophistication? Between the narrow lapels, a neutral-toned modern-patterned shirt – understated yet distinct – reflects an appreciation for nuanced style. The trousers, well fitted in a complementary shade of muted olive, offer both comfort and a sophisticated edge. Notice that they’re made in a slightly textured fabric, adding depth without... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3277969/meet-kira-kira-joey-lee-couture-and-fanny-lau-fictional-hong-kong-fashion-designers-ai-thinks-you?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3277969/meet-kira-kira-joey-lee-couture-and-fanny-lau-fictional-hong-kong-fashion-designers-ai-thinks-you?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Sep 2024 07:15:08 +0000 Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen Are you the kind of person who just likes to get it all off your chest? If not, could you be the kind of artificial intelligence that likes to output the full data load from your natural language processing spatial accelerator chip? Perhaps we all need a good argument every now and again. You can say exactly what you think or “think”, enter into the spirit of disagreeableness, and at the end of it, get on with the rest of your less contradictory life or being. Once you’ve said your bit, it’s... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3276848/ai-tells-us-what-marilyn-monroe-mark-twain-and-confucius-have-common-it-right-how-do-we-know-we-get?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3276848/ai-tells-us-what-marilyn-monroe-mark-twain-and-confucius-have-common-it-right-how-do-we-know-we-get?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 02 Sep 2024 23:15:09 +0000 My artificially intelligent friend has no religious beliefs. Actually, it believes itself to have no beliefs at all, only relying on data-based, hard information for anything it outputs. It is a classic agnostic rational robot. Florence Hartley, in her Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (1860), sternly cautions, “Avoid always any discussion upon religious topics.” No two believers believe the same. Even atheists disagree with each other about the nature of divinity. In Joseph... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3275885/i-asked-ai-biggest-question-all-there-god-then-bot-ran-numbers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3275885/i-asked-ai-biggest-question-all-there-god-then-bot-ran-numbers?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 26 Aug 2024 05:45:09 +0000 Feeling stressed? Why not tell a robot who cares? In June it was reported in these pages that Hong Kong had moved up the rankings to No 50 on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index. But life in the SAR is not so great according to other rankings. The city sits at No 77 on the Mercer Quality of Living scale, 133 out of 197 on the Numbeo Quality of Life index and, in 2022, Business Insider reported Hong Kong was the second most overworked city on the planet after Dubai. The... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3274802/ai-therapy-chatbots-are-revolutionising-counselling-hong-kongs-stressed-out-inhabitants?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3274802/ai-therapy-chatbots-are-revolutionising-counselling-hong-kongs-stressed-out-inhabitants?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 Aug 2024 10:15:09 +0000 Hongkongers are far from the fattest people on this processed-food planet, even though more than 54 per cent are overweight or obese, according to the 2020-22 Hong Kong Department of Health Population Health Survey. This compares favourably to 59 per cent of Europeans who are overweight or obese, almost 70 per cent of Americans and 100 per cent of me. I have put on weight. I know this not just because the hills are steeper, the refrigerator emptier and the shirts more stretched. I know it... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/3274408/lose-weight-ai-advises-eating-half-daily-average-food-intake-should-i-just-listen-my-mother?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/3274408/lose-weight-ai-advises-eating-half-daily-average-food-intake-should-i-just-listen-my-mother?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 15 Aug 2024 08:45:08 +0000 Anyone need help packing boxes? Moving house scores in the top 40 on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. Moreover, a New Zealand study found that the more you move, the more stressed you become in general. Figures from 2016 show that almost 20 per cent of Hong Kong’s population had moved in the previous five years, almost half of those to another district. And yet, according to my AI friend, house-moving can be a terrifically fun activity for family and friends. You can make a day of your house... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/3273264/turn-stressful-moving-day-fun-activity-playing-tetris-and-more-normal-advice-ai?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/3273264/turn-stressful-moving-day-fun-activity-playing-tetris-and-more-normal-advice-ai?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Aug 2024 05:15:09 +0000 Why can’t we be as efficient and well balanced as single-cell organisms, which stay at the same level of consciousness at all times in their anxiety-free lives? Whales can sleep with half their brains, and stay awake and aware with the other half. Bullfrogs are apparently sleep-free. Somewhere down the line some ancestor took a wrong turn. And yet, having set off down this tiring path, how is it that so many of us are so bad at sleeping? My AI friend disagrees with the suggestion that the need... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3272462/ai-offers-help-insomnia-sleep-overrated-or-even-evolutionary-mistake?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3272462/ai-offers-help-insomnia-sleep-overrated-or-even-evolutionary-mistake?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 31 Jul 2024 03:00:11 +0000 Bernard Cohen Bernard Cohen When my daughter and her friends were 11, I had terrible taste in music. To be clear, this was not my perception. It is true that I couldn’t have defined “good music”. I believed I had an eclectic taste, across genres and eras. That is, I knew what I liked. That wasn’t good enough. And even if I did my best to appreciate teen pop, the boundaries of taste constantly shifted. I remained outside, like Tantalus in the Greek myth, reaching towards branches of fruit that recoil from his grasp. Once,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3271141/can-ai-teach-you-have-better-music-taste-listen-beethoven-tupac-and-k-pop-bots-told-me?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3271141/can-ai-teach-you-have-better-music-taste-listen-beethoven-tupac-and-k-pop-bots-told-me?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Jul 2024 03:15:08 +0000 Among the boosters and sceptics in the world of artificial intelligence, I’m staying right here on the fence. My booster shoulder points towards nerdy fun and the chance to argue with AI about its artificiality (not artificial: it’s human data, pillaged and processed) and intelligence (alien in a human suit). It’s useful navigating from place to place, and it can advise on issues ranging from recipes, etiquette, use of space – including detailed discussion of feng shui – to the care of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3269925/have-we-already-lost-control-ai-musings-meta-and-moores-law-facts-about-frogs-saucepans?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3269925/have-we-already-lost-control-ai-musings-meta-and-moores-law-facts-about-frogs-saucepans?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:45:08 +0000 The Burnished Sun by Mirandi Riwoe, pub. University of Queensland Press Paul Gauguin depicts Annah the Javanese perched awkwardly at the front of a blue upholstered chair, naked, meeting the painter’s gaze, in an 1893 canvas. She is described in various sources as his “lover”, and the common version is exemplified in this one from the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1959 book, Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints Sculpture: “While visiting Brittany with his mistress, Annah the Javanese, Gauguin... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3185510/decolonising-culture-paul-gauguins-javanese-mistress?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3185510/decolonising-culture-paul-gauguins-javanese-mistress?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Jul 2022 09:15:20 +0000 City of Orange by David Yoon, pub. G.P. Putnam’s Sons The year is 2010. We’re somewhere in California, and life on Earth seems to have ended. The survivor in City of Orange wakes without any past: “And his name? […] He tests the dead batteries of his memory.” He is lucky enough to find running water and the drive to stay alive. Also lucky enough to forget the cause of his terrible physical pain, and much of what he has lost. Plus, he has something in his shoe that may or may not be lucky. In... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3180368/city-orange-ya-writer-david-yoons-adult-novel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3180368/city-orange-ya-writer-david-yoons-adult-novel?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Jun 2022 11:15:11 +0000 The Colony, by Audrey Magee. Published by Faber & Faber Audrey Magee’s bestselling first novel, The Undertaking (2014), starts with a mud-stuck wedding, absentee bride, lice-infested bridegroom and the invasion of Ukraine (by Germans including the groom): the desperation of war, and a reminder still that life is desperately, darkly funny. Her new novel begins with a lighter comic touch. Mr Lloyd, an English artist on his way to a summer’s painting on a tiny island off the Irish coast, is... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3178093/irelands-troubles-backdrop-colony-audrey-magees-novel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3178093/irelands-troubles-backdrop-colony-audrey-magees-novel?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 May 2022 11:15:19 +0000 Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, pub. Serpent’s Tail By the end of Book 1, Chapter IV, of Booth, Karen Joy Fowler’s page-turning theatrical, family, historical and political saga – that is, around one-tenth of the way through, up to the year 1838 – we have witnessed the Booth family’s struggle to maintain their Maryland farm while Father (Junius) travels the country attempting to find work as a Shakespearean actor, experienced their grief in the deaths of children from cholera and smallpox, and heard... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3170188/fictionalised-history-abraham-lincoln-assassin-john?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3170188/fictionalised-history-abraham-lincoln-assassin-john?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 11 Mar 2022 12:43:15 +0000 Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, pub. Giramondo Publishing Cold Enough for Snow, Melbourne-based Jessica Au’s delicate and subtle second novel – or, at 97 pages, perhaps it is a novella – is not big on plot. True, it tells the straightforward story of its unnamed, expatriated Hong Kong narrator travelling in Japan with her mother, who still lives in Hong Kong. They haven’t seen each other for some years, meet at Tokyo airport, visit art galleries and museums, wander through gardens and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3168434/cold-enough-snow-prize-winning-existential-novel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3168434/cold-enough-snow-prize-winning-existential-novel?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 Feb 2022 11:18:59 +0000 AI 2041: Ten Visions for our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan pub. Currency Predicting the future has its (literary) risks. In his groundbreaking cyberpunk/artificial intelligence novel Neuromancer (1984), William Gibson wrongly foresaw such a great shortage of RAM that a mere 3MB would be motive for murder. This was several orders of magnitude wrong – but speculative fiction has also imagined sub­marines, wireless earphones and, as co-author Kai-Fu Lee points out, the Star Trek holodeck. AI... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3155120/artificial-intelligence-why-kai-fu-lee-capitalist-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3155120/artificial-intelligence-why-kai-fu-lee-capitalist-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Nov 2021 08:45:10 +0000 The Promise by Damon Galgut, pub. Chatto & Windus Damon Galgut has won the 2021 Booker Prize for the best English-language novel published in Great Britain. His remarkable and brilliant novel The Promise tracks the downfall of a white South African family over 30 years, set against South African history from the last years of apartheid. The Promise is Galgut’s ninth novel, and his third to have been shortlisted for the £50,000 (HK$533,000) prize since his first work was published when he was 17.... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3154785/damon-galguts-booker-prize-winning-promise-about-downfall?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3154785/damon-galguts-booker-prize-winning-promise-about-downfall?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 04 Nov 2021 03:06:29 +0000 A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins pub. Riverhead Books A Slow Fire Burning is the latest page-turner from Paula Hawkins, the Zimbabwean-born author of the immensely successful The Girl on the Train (2015). Towards the front of Hawkins’ third novel is a map of a part of inner London identifying the homes of seven characters. Five of them have committed various thefts: money, keys, jewellery, notebooks and life stories, and the other two – mother and estranged son – have died just weeks... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3153426/girl-train-author-paula-hawkins-new-novel-slow-fire?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3153426/girl-train-author-paula-hawkins-new-novel-slow-fire?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Oct 2021 11:15:23 +0000 Faraway by Lo Yi-Chin (translated by Jeremy Tiang), pub. Columbia University Press The latest work from Taiwanese author Lo Yi-Chin is a novelistic memoir, set between Taiwan and mainland China at the turn of this century. Or perhaps it’s a novel where the main character shares the name of the author. According to its translator, “When I pressed him as to how much of the story was fictional, he claimed not to remember.” Either way, Faraway is a work of deep introspection and sometimes... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3148403/comic-tale-two-chinas-taiwan-and-mainland?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3148403/comic-tale-two-chinas-taiwan-and-mainland?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 Sep 2021 08:45:21 +0000 Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki (translated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi and Helen O’Horan). Verso Izumi Suzuki was a “model and actor” in so-called pink films (soft pornography), a “counterculture icon” and legend of Japanese science fiction, whose life was intense and death tragic. Terminal Boredom is intended to be the first of a series of her books to be translated and published in English, with a second collection already in the works. Of course,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3134299/legend-japanese-science-fiction-izumi-suzukis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3134299/legend-japanese-science-fiction-izumi-suzukis?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 21 May 2021 12:15:12 +0000 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life), by George Saunders. Random House Part way through his essay on Leo Tolstoy’s Master and Man, George Saunders interrupts himself and says admiringly: “That’s the kind of story I want to write, the kind that stops being writing and starts being life. “But, Lord, it’s harder than it looks.” A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, the 2017 Booker Prize winner’s new book, is a series of meditations on... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3132642/slow-down-pay-attention-swim-pond-rain-george?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3132642/slow-down-pay-attention-swim-pond-rain-george?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 07 May 2021 20:15:15 +0000 First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel), Knopf In “Cream”, the opening story of Haruki Murakami’s new collection, the narrator buys a bunch of flowers for a pianist acquaintance who has invited him to her concert several hours away, only to find on arrival that the venue is locked and the concert does not exist: “Maybe the whole thing was a hoax that the girl had cooked up […] For some reason that I couldn’t fathom, she’d deliberately given me false information... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3129780/first-person-singular-haruki-murakamis-new-collection?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3129780/first-person-singular-haruki-murakamis-new-collection?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Apr 2021 12:15:13 +0000 Klara and the Sunby Kazuo IshiguroKnopf Philip K. Dick titled his famous 1968 sci-fi work on the status of artificial humans – later made into the film Blade Runner – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Should we worry about robots becoming too human? Should we forgive them? Klara and the Sun is a cleverly meshed, tightly structured and fast-reading novel, sitting at the philosophical end of sci-fi, far removed from detailed accounts of the technical aspects of robotics and artificial... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3126850/klara-and-sun-kazuo-ishiguro-examines-what-it-be?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3126850/klara-and-sun-kazuo-ishiguro-examines-what-it-be?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Mar 2021 07:15:06 +0000 My Brilliant Life by Ae-ran Kim Forge Books Areum, narrator of Ae-ran Kim’s wistful, funny-sad novel, warns that the book we are about to read “is the story of the youngest parents with the oldest child”. Now available in English for the first time, My Brilliant Life was first published in Korea in 2011 as My Palpitating Life. The 2014 film version starred Song Hye-kyo as Areum’s young mother, Mira. Also published in 2011 was John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, and these two belong not too far... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3122341/ae-ran-kims-my-brilliant-life-heart-rending-story?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3122341/ae-ran-kims-my-brilliant-life-heart-rending-story?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Feb 2021 05:15:11 +0000 My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee, Riverhead Books Chang-rae Lee’s latest novel, My Year Abroad, is part-bildungsroman and part-shaggy dog story, a great big novel overflowing with eating, multilingual phrases (including Mandarin, Korean, even Yiddish), the finer points of fast food and high-cuisine, references to German and Japanese knife-making, boating, etymology, more eating, surfing, pop psych, mall architecture, Chinese environmental regulation, scuba diving, drugs, dog sledding and still... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3120528/my-year-abroad-chang-rae-lee-explores-what-it-means?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3120528/my-year-abroad-chang-rae-lee-explores-what-it-means?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Feb 2021 12:45:07 +0000 It was a fairy tale of a year, 2020, meaning that around the world, many of us have been sealed in our towers behind increasingly forbidding forests – though in this case the (vaccination) needle is expected to prove to be the liberator rather than Sleeping Beauty’s imprisoning agent. It was also a fairy tale in that the world’s stories were told in multiple versions, many with unreliable or disputed origins. The world’s superpowers and swarms on social media wrestled to control the narrative.... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3116911/gender-swapped-fairy-tales-unsurprisingly-princesses?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3116911/gender-swapped-fairy-tales-unsurprisingly-princesses?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 08 Jan 2021 18:30:13 +0000 A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems by Marilyn Chin, W.W. Norton, 2018 A Portrait of the Self as Nation brings together Marilyn Chin’s poems from her first volume, in 1987, to the present. It is both an overview and, as she notes in her preface, “best hits” – and what hits they are. Drawn from a prodigious career of poetry and advocacy, the book is a poem-by-poem, line-by-line, image-by-image masterclass in formal play, allusion and wit. Every poet creates her reader and as... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3110045/portrait-self-nation-poet-marilyn-chins-greatest-hits?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3110045/portrait-self-nation-poet-marilyn-chins-greatest-hits?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 Nov 2020 02:45:13 +0000 The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha (translated from Indonesian by Stephen J. Epstein), Harvill Secker. 4/5 stars Despite their reader-empower­ing name, choose-your-own-adventure books are more distinguished by the limits placed on the reader’s choice of path than any broad freedom of literary navigation. At most you will have three or four possible paths, and all are bound to lead to the end. What’s more, even though “you” will be the protagonist, typical second-person narration often sounds... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3108367/wandering-intan-paramaditha-puts-reader-charge?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3108367/wandering-intan-paramaditha-puts-reader-charge?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Nov 2020 05:45:18 +0000 Masking the City: Hong Kong in Allegory edited by Nathan Lauer, Hong Kong Writers Circle Writers’ groups provide isolated or gregarious literary artists with the comradeship of shared successes and shared commiserations. They vary from highly organised groups with clear writing and publication goals to rough collectives of drinkers in need of company. Hong Kong Writers Circle has been bringing together English-language authors in the city since 1991, and is at the more structured and productive... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3107355/hong-kong-writers-circles-anthology-masking-city-uses?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3107355/hong-kong-writers-circles-anthology-masking-city-uses?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 03 Nov 2020 08:15:06 +0000