It's out second Tsundoku of lockdown and maybe we have a problem - fewer books than normal are being published but maybe, if you're lucky, you're getting through your tsundoku pile? So this May is a little light, but some good stuff all the same...
That We May Live is a remarkable anthology of Chinese speculative fiction offers seven tales of societal responsibility and individual freedom. It's also the first book in the brand-new Calico Series, we bring you work by some of
today's most exciting writers from China and Hong Kong, including
Dorothy Tse (tr. Natascha Bruce), Zhu Hui (tr. Michael Day), and Enoch
Tam (tr. Jeremy Tiang).
C Pam Zhang's
How Much of These Hills is Gold is a sweeping adventure tale, an unforgettable sibling story and a
remarkable novel about a family bound and divided by its memories.Wagons, gambling dens, dusty towns and dodgy outlaws. Two Chinese orphaned siblings, Lucy and Sam, who confront the fantasy of the
American Dream while carrying their father's body across the west in
search of a place to bury him.
Timothy Hallinan's
Street Music sees his recurring character Poke Rafferty in Bangkok. The
most cantankerous member of the small gang of Old Bangkok Hands who
hang out at The Expat Bar suddenly goes missing under suspicious
circumstances. Engaged in the search for the missing American and the
challenges of life with a newborn, Rafferty misses the fact that he's
being followed by someone who puts his whole life in Thailand at risk.
And some non-fiction around this month too...
Tessa Keswick (yes, of those Jardines Keswicks) memoir
The Colour of Sky After Rain starts from her first trip to China in 1982. Over
the next thirty years, she travelled extensively in China, visiting its
temples and landmarks, the sites of its most famous battles, and the
birthplaces of its best-known poets and philosophers. She also witnessed
China's transformation, as hundreds of millions were lifted out of
poverty and the country emerged as an economic superpower in waiting.
Covell Meyskins's
Mao's Third Front starts in 1964, with the Chinese Communist Party making a momentous policy
decision to construct a top-secret massive military industrial complex in the
mountains of inland China was built, which the Party hoped to keep hidden
from enemy bombers. Mao named this the Third Front. The Third Front
received more government investment than any other developmental
initiative of the Mao era, and yet this huge industrial war machine,
which saw the mobilization of fifteen million people, was not officially
acknowledged for over a decade and a half.
And finally Gregory Adam Scott's
Bulding the Buddhist Revival: Reconstructing Monastries in Modern China. Between 1850 and 1966, tens of thousands of Buddhist sacred sites in
China were destroyed, victims of targeted destruction, accidental
damage, or simply neglect. During the same period, however, many of
these sites were reconstructed, a process that involved both rebuilding
material structures and reviving religious communities.
