Asian Review of Books

On a trip many years ago to New Delhi, I was struck by an official memorial to Subhas Chandra Bose, the wartime leader of the Indian National Army, the Japan-affiliated force of Indians who fought against the British during the Second World War. India, of course, has a more complex view of the fight against Japan than other countries involved in the War–with these soldiers being contentious, debated and, at times, celebrated. In this interview, I’m joined by Tanvi Srivastava, translator ofThe War Diary of Asha-san: From Tokyo to Netaji's Indian National Army(HarperCollins India: 2022).The book is a unique historical document showing the life of Lt Bharati ‘Asha’ Sahay Choudhry, a 17-year-old Indian girl, raised in Japan, who signed up to fight the British in 1943. While she never quite makes it to the frontlines, her story—as translated by her eventual grandaughter-in-law, Tanvi—discusses the war’s events from a different vantage point. Tanvi Srivastavaalso writes fiction and was a member of the 2021 cohort of the Write Beyond Borders programme funded by the British Council. She has been published in journals like Kitaab, Gulmohur Quarterly, New Anthology of Asian Writing, and The Reading Hour. She can be followed on Twitter at@tanvisrivastavaand on Instagram at@tanvisrivastava_a. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofThe War Diary of Asha-san. 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Opium is an awkward commodity. For the West, it’s a reminder of some of the shadier and best forgotten parts of its history. For China (and a few other countries), it’s a symbol of national humiliation, left to the past–unless it needs to shame a foreign country. But the opium trade survived for decades, through to the end of the Second World War. How did that trade actually work? How was it possible to trade a good that was, at best, tolerated in the strange gap between legal and illegal. This trade is what Peter Thilly covers in his bookThe Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China(Stanford University Press, 2022). In this interview, Peter and I talk about opium, how people traded this quasi-legal good, and the changing opium trade–including a surprising source of illicit drugs in the region. Peter Thilly is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. He is currently working on a global microhistory of the 1853 Small Sword Uprising. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofThe Opium Business. 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Opium is an awkward commodity. For the West, it’s a reminder of some of the shadier and best forgotten parts of its history. For China (and a few other countries), it’s a symbol of national humiliation, left to the past–unless it needs to shame a foreign country. But the opium trade survived for decades, through to the end of the Second World War. How did that trade actually work? How was it possible to trade a good that was, at best, tolerated in the strange gap between legal and illegal. This trade is what Peter Thilly covers in his bookThe Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China(Stanford University Press, 2022). In this interview, Peter and I talk about opium, how people traded this quasi-legal good, and the changing opium trade–including a surprising source of illicit drugs in the region. Peter Thilly is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. He is currently working on a global microhistory of the 1853 Small Sword Uprising. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofThe Opium Business. 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Monica Macias, the youngest daughter of Equatorial Guinea’s first president at just seven years old, lands in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1979. Her father had sent her to the country to study, but what was meant to be a shorter visit grew to a decade-long stay when her father was ousted in a coup. Monica stays in Pyongyang until 1994, when she graduates from Pyongyang University of Light Industry, and she decides to travel the world: to China, to Spain, to South Korea, to Equatorial Guinea, the U.S. and the U.K. Everywhere she goes, people are puzzled by her background: an African woman who speaks perfect, flawless, accentless Korean. She first told her story in her biography “I’m Monica from Pyongyang” was published in Korean in 2013. She now tells her story in English inBlack Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity(Duckworth, 2023). In this interview, we talk about Monica’s story, her time in Pyongyang, her travels around the world, and what misperceptions we may have about one of the world’s most isolated countries. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofBlack Girl in Pyongyang. 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

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 publishesYamuna’s Journey: one of the first, if notthefirst, 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 atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofYamuna’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/adchoices Support 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’sChina 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 ofThe Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa(Cornell University Press: 1989) andThe Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation(Yale University Press: 2003) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofChina 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/adchoices Support 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’sChina 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 ofThe Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa(Cornell University Press: 1989) andThe Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation(Yale University Press: 2003) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofChina 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/adchoices Support 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 ofThe 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 atThe 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/adchoices Support 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 ofThe 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 atThe 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/adchoices Support 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 ofTragic 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 includeThe 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 atThe Asian Review of Books, including its review ofTragic 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review