Asian Review of Books

In 1856, the East India Company imposed the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, allowing widows to remarry after their husband’s death. The Act was controversial at the time: Hindu traditionalists, particularly in higher castes, prevented widows from remarrying to protect the family’s honor, and even teenage and child widows were expected to live lives of austerity.The following year, the Marathi author Baba Padmanji publishes Yamuna’s Journey: one of the first, if not the first, novel in an Indian language. The novel, recently translated by Deepra Dandekar and published by Speaking Tiger Books, follows the story of Yamuna, an educated Marathi woman (and secret Christian), and her husband Vinayak as they travel the region, encountering tragic tales of Hindu widows prevented from remarrying.Deepra Dandekar is a researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. She is the author of Baba Padmanji: Vernacular Christianity in Colonial India, the first critical biography of Baba Padmanji in English.We’re joined today by Mariyam Haider, researcher-writer and spoken word artist in Singapore.In this interview the three of us talk about Yamuna’s Journey, its Christian roots, and the debate about widow remarriage in nineteenth century India.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Yamuna’s Journey. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

If there’s a starting point to the relationship between Russia and China, it’s likely the 1650s—when Manchu and Cossack forces clash near Khabarovsk, and when Russia sends its first, and unsuccessful, embassy to China.It’s an inopportune start to four centuries of trade, diplomacy, imperialism, ideology–and a lot of personal griping between different Russian and Chinese leaders, as charted by Philip Snow’s China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale University Press, 2023)Snow writes of Russian territorial grabs, China’s reliance on its northern neighbor for diplomatic support and training, Russia’s confused attitude towards Asia—and then the rapid reversal of power and status with the death of Stalin.In this interview, Philip and I talk about the China-Russia relationship, spanning four centuries–and what that history tells us about China and Russia’s relations today.Philip Snow has traveled extensively in Russia and China since the 1960s and has lived in Hong Kong since 1994. An expert in China’s international relations, he is the author of The Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa (Cornell University Press: 1989) and The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation (Yale University Press: 2003)You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of China and Russia. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Lucy Aldrich, sister-in-law to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and daughter of Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, joked in a letter to her sister that she had an easy out for any boring conversation: For the rest of my life, when I am ‘stalled’ conversationally, it would be a wonderful thing to fall back on: ‘Oh, I must tell you about the time I was captured by Chinese bandits.’Aldrich was one of many foreign grandees traveling on a 1923 Beijing-bound train from Shanghai, captured by the Shandong Provisional Army, a ragtag group of bandits who hoped the American, British, and European hostages might force China’s government and its many warlords to accede to its demands.The hostage situation is the subject of The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China (PublicAffairs, 2023), from James M. Zimmerman, who studies the frantic efforts by diplomats, China’s government and, at times, the hostages and bandits themselves in avoiding a bloody outcome.In this interview, James and I talk about what became known as the “Lincheng Incident,” and how this hostage situation and potential diplomatic disaster may have changed the course of Chinese history.James M. Zimmerman is a Beijing-based lawyer who has lived and worked in China for over 25 years. He is among China's leading foreign lawyers, and is the author of the China Law Deskbook, published by the American Bar Association, and is frequently featured as a political commentator on US-China relations in various print and broadcast media around the globe. He is the former four-term Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

In mid-April, Myanmar’s military bombed a village in the country’s northwest, killing over a hundred people in what’s been considered the deadliest attack in the now two-year civil war in the country: The result of the Myanmar military’s coup in February 2021.The airstrike happened after my conversation with Professor Amitav Acharya, author of Tragic Nation Burma--Why and How Democracy Failed (Penguin Random House SEA, 2022). Yet it’s a reminder of the coup and the civil war’s consequences for the people of Myanmar.Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. Some of his many works include The End of American World Order (Polity: 2014); Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics (Cambridge University Press: 2018); and, with Barry Buzan, The Making of Global International Relations (Cambridge University Press: 2019)—and many books besides about Southeast Asia.In this interview, Amitav and I talk about why Myanmar's military junta launched its coup (and derailed the country’s opening), how Myanmar’s population have reacted to these events, and the response of the international community.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Tragic Nation Burma. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The Rohingya population, from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are a community almost living entirely in exile, whether in refugee camps in Bangladesh, or working on boats throughout the Indian Ocean. The Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, is now the world’s largest.But the Rohingya’s struggles began long before the crisis intensified in 2012 and 2017, as noted in Kaamil Ahmed’s first book, I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers (Hurst, 2023). Kaamil talks to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and beyond to understand how this community has tried to survive years of neglect and at times hostility from the governments and institutions meant to look after them.In this interview, Kaamil and I talk about the Rohingya population, their lives in the refugee camps, and their attempts to make a life for themselves.Kaamil Ahmed is a journalist at The Guardian, covering international development, who previously lived in and reported from Jerusalem, Bangladesh and Turkey.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of I Feel No Peace. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Mai Nardone’s Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random House, 2023) opens with two migrants from Thailand’s northeast who travel to Bangkok to make a new life for themselves in the bustling city. As they enter, they pass under a sign, asking visitors to “Take Home a Thousand Smiles.” It’s an ironic start to their lives in Bangkok, as the two live an unstable, hardscrabble life on Bangkok’s fringes.The two are just a few of the characters that populate Mai Nardone’s short story collection. From a mixed-race daughter of an American-Thai couple, to two “strayboys” jumping from job to job, Mai’s characters try to carve a niche for themselves in a changing and sometimes unforgiving city.In this interview, Mai and I talk about Thailand, the divergence between its public hospitality and the unstable lives of the migrants that live there, and how authors should write about this Southeast Asian country.Mai Nardone is a Thai and American writer whose fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Granta, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He lives in Bangkok.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Welcome Me to the Kingdom. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi closed the Planning Commission, which he accused of stifling the country’s growth and being a holdover from the country’s time as a socialist country. It was an ignoble end to the government body, which in the early days of independence charted the country’s Five-Year Plans for economic development.Nikhil Menon, in his first book Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development from Cambridge University Press (2022), looks at how India’s efforts towards economic planning helped the country find a path between Western and Soviet economic models, supercharged the growth of Indian statistics, and tried to foster a more public democracy.In this interview, Nikhil and I talk about planning and democracy, statistics, and perhaps one of the book’s central figures, Professor Mahalanobis, the father of Indian statistics.Nikhil Menon is a historian of modern South Asia, specializing in the political and economic history of twentieth-century India. His research explores the histories of democracy and development in independent India.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Planning Democracy. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The Myanmar coup on February 1, 2021 shocked the world, and ended an opening that had fostered hopes for democratization and economic development. The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, reversed a decade’s worth of changes, and sparked a civil conflict that has continued for two years since the coup.Why did the military launch a coup? What reasons do the Tatmadaw give for seizing such a central role in the country’s affairs? Oliver Slow, a reporter who was based in Myanmar over the past decades, shares his on-the-ground experiences in his recent book Return of the Junta: Why Myanmar’s Military Must Go Back to the Barracks (Bloomsbury, 2023)In this interview, Oliver and I talk about his history in Myanmar, how the military grew to see itself as the protectors of Myanmar–despite what the people think–and the complicated conflict in Rakhine State.Oliver Slow is an award-winning multimedia journalist. Previously based in Southeast Asia for more than a decade, he’s recently returned to the United Kingdom, where he works for the BBC.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Return of the Junta. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

When the two immigrant parents in Zeno Sworder’s latest illustrated book go to the baker asking for a cake for their son, the baker asks for something different instead of money.“Five centimeters should do it,” says the baker. “Your height, of course”That starts the story of My Strange Shrinking Parents (Thames & Hudson: 2023): a tale that connects to immigration, parental sacrifice, and the changing perspective that comes with growing up.In this interview, Zeno and I talk about immigrant parents, the use of height as a symbol, and what’s different about creating an illustrated book.Zeno Sworder is a writer and artist who lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is also the author of This Small Blue Dot (Thames & Hudson: 2021).You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of My Strange Shrinking Parents. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

In 2010, Ping An took over Shenzhen Development Bank, ending an experiment that had never been tried before, and not been tried since: a foreign company owning and managing a Chinese bank. Newbridge Capital, a private equity firm, shocked the financial world when it agreed to take over the bank five years earlier–and successfully made it a pioneer.Weijian Shan, then a partner in Newbridge Capital, writes about the whole escapade in his third book Money Machine: A Trailblazing American Venture in China (Wiley: 2023), from when the deal first started, through its many reforms, to Newbridge’s final exit.In this interview, Shan and I talk about the trailblazing deal to take over Shenzhen Development Bank, how important that was in the story of China’s development–and whether private equity gets a bad rap.Weijian Shan is co-founder and executive chairman of PAG, a leading private equity firm in Asia. Prior to his career in private equity, Shan was, at different times, a managing director at JP Morgan and a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America (Wiley: 2019) and Money Games: The Inside Story of How American Dealmakers Saved Korea’s Most Iconic Bank (Wiley: 2020).You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books.. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review