Books
Book reviews
Books
Book review- Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
The Trans-Siberian Express is one of the world’s most famous transcontinental journeys, spanning Russia from Moscow to Siberia. But in American novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, the Trans-Siberian is merely his way back home after a gruelling journey from London to Tokyo across Asia, mostly by train. Theroux crossed […]
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Book review- Ten Cities That Made an Empire
At its peak, the British Empire owned territories around the world on almost every continent from Africa to Asia to Australia. I’m sure most of us have been to countries that made up this empire. At its core were illustrious cities like Bombay, Hong Kong, Cape Town and New Delhi, which provided the industry, commerce, […]
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Book reviews
Books
Book review- Finding George Orwell in Burma
It is a good thing I didn’t read this book before I went to Myanmar (Burma). If I did, I probably wouldn’t have had such a carefree mindset. Finding George Orwell in Burma is an American writer’s attempt in 2003 to trace Orwell’s life in the country which had a huge influence on him. Orwell spent five […]
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Book reviews
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Book review- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Twenty years ago, Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote a novel that ended up winning a Booker Prize. In 2017, she released her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which sounds like a cheery, whimsical work, but that is not the type of writer Roy is. So while I was slightly taken by surprise when the […]
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Taiwan
Book review- Green Island
Green Island is a novel about the life of a Taiwanese man imprisoned after the 228 Tragedy in 1948 and his family as they endure Taiwan’s decades of repressive martial law before it became a democracy in the late 1980s. I read Green Island earlier this year at almost the same time that across the Taiwan […]
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Book review- Indonesia Etc
Completely made up of islands, and thus the world’s largest archipelago nation, Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation and fourth most populous, as well as Southeast Asia’s largest economy. But for such a huge, diverse country, Indonesia is still obscure to the world other than Bali. Elisabeth Pisani decided to do something about this by […]
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Book reviews
Books
China
Book review- The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China
China is a large country with an area of 3.7 million square miles and, though the majority Han ethnic group make up 90% of its population, has over 50 ethnic groups. As a result, beyond the heavily-populated Han-majority provinces with teeming megacities and factory zones, there is a lot of ethnic and cultural diversity on […]
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