The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 by Charles Stephenson.

World War I in the Far East was a sideshow in the grand scheme of things, but it had long-reaching implications, setting up further conflict in the region. Nevertheless, the main action, the Battle of Tsingtau, was full of drama, bravery, and suffering, which is covered in the book – The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 by Charles Stephenson.

The Peking Express by James M. Zimmerman

In 1923, the Blue Express, a luxury train also known as the Peking Express, departed from Shanghai, chugging northward to Peking. On the night of May 5^th, near the town of Lincheng, a gang of Chinese bandits derailed the Peking Express and took the passengers hostage, leading to a standoff that captured the world’s attention.

Play the Red Queen - A Vietnam War Crime Thriller

Saigon 1963 – multiple American military advisers and South Vietnamese Army officers are gunned down by the mysterious Red Queen, a deadly Vietnamese assassin. Two MP detectives, Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, are called in to investigate but find themselves stumbling into a mystery that's much deeper with international implications.

Ghost Girl, Banana: Elaine Chiew Chats With Acclaimed Debut Novelist Wiz Wharton

About the Book:

Set between the last years of the “Chinese Windrush” in 1966 and Hong Kong’s Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother’s homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.

Hong Kong, 1966. Sook-Yin is exiled from Kowloon to London with orders to restore honor to her family. As she strives to fit into a world that does not understand her, she realises that survival will mean carving out a destiny of her own.Thirty years later in London, having lost her mother as a small child, biracial misfit Lily can only remember what Maya, her preternaturally perfect older sister, has told her about Sook-Yin. Unexpectedly named in the will of a powerful Chinese stranger, Lily embarks on a secret pilgrimage across the world to discover the lost side of her identity and claim the reward. But just as change is coming to Hong Kong, so Lily learns Maya’s secrecy about their past has deep roots, and that good fortune comes at a price.

 Heartfelt, wry and achingly real, Ghost Girl, Banana marks the stunning debut of a writer-to-watch.  

About the Author:

Wiz Wharton, Courtesy of Author

Wiz Wharton was born in London of Chinese-European heritage. She is a prize-winning graduate of the National Film and Television school, where she studied screenwriting under the filmmakers Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears and Kenith Trodd. Ghost Girl, Banana is her debut novel. Adaptation rights have also been optioned by a leading UK production company. She lives in the Scottish Highlands. Her twitter handle is @Chomsky1and Instagram is @wizwharton 

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EC: Congratulations on your debut novel, Ghost Girl, Banana, which has just launched to much critical acclaim in the UK. In your acknowledgement, you mentioned the story’s inception as ‘the discovery of some old-fashioned floppy discs in a box’. Can you tell us about how a whole novel was borne out of this discovery? 

WW: Yes, so this happened back in 2020 when I was moving house and discovered the discs in a box of my late mum’s possessions. Initially, I had no idea what they were, and it was only later that I discovered they were transcriptions of her diaries, kept since she arrived in the UK in the early sixties as an immigrant from Hong Kong. Although painful to read in parts, they were also transformative in revealing so many of her experiences which she had never really spoken about during her lifetime. That stoicism is germane to many women of that generation, I think, as much as it’s also a cultural thing, but I remember wondering how many other hidden stories there were out there, and what a tragedy it was that they weren’t more represented in the British fiction space. As much as a novel is always an ambitious creative project to embark upon, I had a whole wealth of information in front of me to draw upon, so I was very fortunate in that respect.

The Japanese Home Front 1937 - 1945 by Philipp Jowett & Adam Hook

As I’ve stated many times, there’s long been a blind spot about the Asian Theater of World War II. You can stack the books written about Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan side by side, the former would dwarf the latter. When books do appear about Japan during World War II, they are usually about the front in the Pacific, or, less often, in the Chinese and Burma theaters. A notable exception is Japan At War: An Oral History. However, Osprey Publishing has recently released The Japanese Home Front 1937 – 1945, which aims to help fill that gap.

When the Red Gates Opened: A Memoir of China's Reawakening

The 1980s was a period of rapid change and economic growth for China. In 1979, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping opened special economic zones in southern China, experimenting with market capitalism. Dori Jones Yang, a reporter for BusinessWeek, saw China’s rise in the 1980s and has recorded it for her memoir When The Red Gates Opened.

Japan's Asian Allies - A Look at the Collaborationist Regimes of World War II

Compared to Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire during World War II receives little to no coverage in Western media. Even more obscure, are the many puppet regimes that aided the Japanese occupation throughout Asia, spanning from the far north in Manchuria to the south in Burma and the Philippines. Luckily, Osprey publishing has come to the rescue with their newest edition to the Men At Arms series titled Japan’s Asian Allies 1941 – 45.

The Bitter Peace by Philip S. Jowett - Conflict in China 1928-1937

Chinese history has long been ignored in the West, but a few spotlights do shine out from time to time on certain events, even if only to provide superficial understanding. These usually point to the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, and, recently, the Sino-Japanese War. However, there is a small window of time in Chinese history that contained multiple smaller wars, which has almost been completely ignored by Western scholars. This brief era is what The Bitter Peace – Conflict in China 1928-37 by Philip S. Jowett illuminates.

Golden Kamuy Volumes 1-5 - A Shonen Manga of Adventure and History

Golden Kamuy by Satoru Noda is a shonen manga series that covers a wide range of genres – adventure, war, political intrigue, comedy, and thrillers. Set shortly after the Russo-Japanese War (1904 – 1905) it follows Saichi Sugimoto, a veteran of the conflict, and his quest for a legendary stash of gold hidden in Hokkaido, the most northern of Japan’s main islands. While fighting at the vicious Battle of Port Arthur, he earned the nickname “Immortal Sugimoto,” given his almost legendary ability to avoid death, which he keeps throughout the remainder of this series.

Japan's Greatest Victory, Britain's Worst Defeat - A Memoir of the Battle of Singapore

It’s often said “history is written by the victors,” and this only half true. While the narrative of World War II is definitely constructed from the Allied lens, this does not mean that the vanquished were unable to tell their stories. German officers and soldiers pumped out volumes of memoirs during the postwar years, many of which were consumed voraciously by readers in America and Britain. Japanese memoirs were more sparse, at least regarding translations that made it to the West. One notable exception was Masanobu Tsuji’s memoir Japan’s Greatest Victory, Britain’s Worst Defeat.

Osprey's Japanese Armies 1868 - 1877 - The Boshin War and Satsuma Rebellion

Osprey Publishing has become synonymous (in my mind at least) for quality research into military history of all time periods, throughout the world. It should come as no surprise that I immediately picked up Osprey's latest title Japanese Armies 1868 - 1877 by Gabriele Esposito and illustrated by Giuseppe Rave, which covers the Boshin War and Satsuma Rebellion.

The Day The Music Died: Elaine Chiew Sits Down With Fairoz Ahmad

Fairoz Ahmad, courtesy of Ethos Books

Bio:

Fairoz Ahmad is the co-founder of the award-winning social enterprise, Chapter W. For his work with the community, he was awarded the National University of Singapore's Outstanding Young Alumni award and United Kingdom's Commonwealth Point of Light award. He also lectures in sociology and community development at Temasek Polytechnic. Fairoz graduated from the University of Oxford with a Master of Public Policy (Distinction) under the Chevening-Oxford scholarship. His book, Interpreter of Winds, was published by Ethos Books in 2019. The book is a reflection of his experiences and observations growing up Muslim in a world too busy, too distracted, to understand one another.

Book Synopsis:

Often an unnoticed caress on our faces, winds are voiceless and formless. How do we interpret them? What mysteries can we find in the whispers of winds? From a Dutch occupied Java where a witch was murdered, a dog who desires to be a Muslim, to a day in which all sense of music is lost, the mundane is aflame with the uncanny.

In these stories, Fairoz Ahmad invites you to take a closer look at ordinary objects, as they take on a life of their own and spin gossamer threads. This book is a celebration of the little charms and enchantments of our universes amidst struggles and eventual helplessness.

Japanese Destroyer Captain - A Memoir of The Pacific War

Japanese Destroyer Captain is the postwar memoir of Tameichi Hara, a Japanese Navy officer who earned the nickname the “Miracle Captain.” He is one of the only Japanese captains to have survived the entire Pacific War from its beginning in 1941 to its end in 1945. Of the 175 destroyers the Imperial Navy possessed during World War II, 129 were sunk.

Eminent Historian Professor Wang Gungwu converses with Elaine Chiew on his autobiography, Home Is Not Here

Photo courtesy of NUS Press

From the book jacket:

Wang Gungwu is one of Asia’s most important public intellectuals. He is best-known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora. With Home Is Not Here, the historian of grand themes turns to a single life history: his own.

In this volume, Wang talks about his multi-cultural upbringing and life under British rule. He was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents’ orientation was always to China. Wang grew up in the plural, multi-ethnic town of Ipoh, Malaya (now Malaysia). He learned English in colonial schools and was taught the Confucian classics at home. After the end of WWII and the Japanese occupation, he left for the National Central University in Nanjing to study alongside some of the finest of his generation of Chinese undergraduates. The victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party interrupted his education, and he ends this volume with his return to Malaya. 

Wise and moving, this is a fascinating reflection on family, identity and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amid the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world.