Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival 2015

Asia House, London, in partnership with the Bagri Foundation, is in the first few days of its annual Literature Festival. Now in its ninth year, this is the only UK Festival dedicated to pan-Asian writing and will include talks from some of the most exciting names in literature, including Turkey’s bestselling author Elif Şafak, and one of South Korea’s most important modern writers, Hwang Sok-yong.

This Week in Asian Review of Books

Asian Books Blog is not a review site. If you want reviews, see the Asian Review of Books. Here is a list of its newest reviews and round ups:

OperaHK's Das Land des Lächelns by Franz Lehar reviewed by Peter Gordon
Hong Kong Policeman by Chris Emmet reviewed by David McKirdy
A Season for Martyrs by Bina Shah reviewed byShahbano Bilgrami
The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805-1905 by Ferdinand Mount reviewed by Nigel Collett

The Sunday Post

Click here for a post from the OUP blog on learning from Buddhist moral psychology.

Click here for a review of Sitti Nurbaya, by Marah Rusli, translated from Bahasa Indonesian by George A. Fowler, the latest addition to the Modern Library of Indonesia, published by the Lontar Foundation.

Click here for a piece from Publishing Perspectives on book markets for literary translations. 

The shortlist for the 2015 Ondaatje Prize for a book evoking the spirit of place has been announced:

• Rana Dasgupta Capital (Canongate)
• Helen Dunmore The Lie (Hutchinson)
• Tobias Hill What Was Promised (Bloomsbury Circus)
• Justin Marozzi Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood (Allen Lane)
• Sigrid Rausing Everything is Wonderful (Grove Press)
• Elif Shafak The Architect’s Apprentice (Viking)

Writing Through: Cultivating Voices in Sala Bai, Cambodia

Student Uk Sreytouch reading her poem

Writing Through Cambodia is a programme using creative writing to improve Cambodian students’ fluency in English, both spoken and written, to develop their capacity for conceptual thought, and to enhance their self-esteem.  It also works with Cambodian teachers.

Writing Through Cambodia was founded by Sue Guiney, an American-born, British-resident poet, novelist and educator. When she is not volunteering with Writing Through Cambodia, Jeanne McKay is a conservation biologist living in Singapore, from where she manages a conservation research project in Sumatra, Indonesia. 

Jeanne and Sue collaborated on a guest post exploring the role of Writing Through Cambodia.

This Week in Asian Review of Books

Asian Books Blog is not a review site. If you want reviews, see the Asian Review of Books. Here is a list of its newest reviews and round ups:

Weekend reading: links to essays elsewhere selected by Peter Gordon
The Blind Writer by Sameer Pandya reviewed by Peter Gordon
After the Ancestors: An Anthropologist’s Story by Andrew Beatty reviewed by Tim Hannigan
Reprise: The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto reviewed by Peter Gordon

The Sunday Post

A rojak* of items that caught my eye this week…

Indie Spotlight: G.L. Tysk

Indie Spotlight is our monthly column on self-publishing. This month, Raelee Chapman talks to indie author G.L Tysk.

G.L Tysk was born in Chicago to Hong Kong Immigrants and her novels focus on early American whaling history and its impact, 19^th century colonialism, and Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant culture. Her first novel The Sea-God at Sunrise is based on the story of John Manjiro one of the first Japanese people to live and work in America. It took four years to research and reached the quarter finals of the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. It has also been well received on Goodreads with above 4 out of 5 stars as an average rating.  G.L Tysk’s new novel Paradise, the sequel to Sea-God at Sunrise, was released in February 2015.