• August 2026

  Letter from the mudflats

  Hai-Dang Phan

  A father and son travel to experience Vietnam through the birds that call it home, even if only for a little while.

• August 2026

  A mosque with no name

  Tricia Taormina

  There are no longer any Muslim families in Mari in eastern India, yet the Hindu residents continue tending to their village’s empty mosque.

• August 2026

  China’s dropout generation

  David Frazier

  Chinese law allows the state to punish its citizens for consuming cannabis outside its borders, but many young Chinese citizens see Thailand as a safe haven for mind-altering experiments.

• August 2026

  Kashmir’s new commentary box

  Umar Farooq

  After years of internet disruptions, a generation of Kashmiri cricket commentators is turning village matches into digital broadcasts, and building livelihoods through a connection they once lived without

• August 2026

  The way of the sword

  Simon Rowe

  The three volumes of Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi: The Novel contain a rollicking yarn with a cast of colourful characters that swirls about its nucleus, Musashi, with curious and often calamitous results.

• August 2026

  Reading Hong Kong as an archipelago

  Gabrielle See

  Independent bookstores opening on Hong Kong’s islands not only offer good reads, but also operate as third spaces that serve their local communities.

• August 2026

  Xinjiang week

  Nithin Coca

  Uyghur dance performances are invariably showcased by Chinese officials in an attempt to show that everything in Xinjiang is ‘normal’. It’s a move that, through its absurdity, creates even more unease.

• August 2026

  Power, concentrated

  Theodore Pham

  The General: Vietnam in the Age of Tô Lâm shows that not even foreigners or non-Vietnamese speakers have immunity from the iron fist Tô Lâm, the Communist Party of Vietnam’s general secretary.

• August 2026

  Philippines: the dramedy

  Sol Iglesias

  Beyond Geopolitics: The Philippines in the New Marcos Era is a good guide to the first half of the Marcos Jr administration, and much of what is written on corruption, political dynasties, elite competition, and debilitated institutions helps to explain present circumstances.

• August 2026

  Remembering is a political act

  Atika Shubert

  In contexts where public narratives are written and rewritten according to the whims of those in power, and selective amnesia is imposed upon the population, remembering becomes a political act.

• August 2026

  Sense and nonsense

  Dương Mạnh Hùng

  In Nguyễn Bình Phương’s 1994 novel, The Young Die Old, magical realism thus functions as a mirror for a society in anguish

• August 2026

  To know Kaveri

  Monique Nair

  How many places exist only in narration because today they are lost, or they are not as they were?

• August 2026

  The Ark

  Cicilia Oday, translated from Indonesian by Fulvia

  A short story by Cicilia Oday, translated from Indonesian by Fulvia.

• August 2026

  Where literature becomes activism

  Ooi Kee Beng

  In media partnership with the 2026 George Town Literary Festival.

Free to read

• May 2026

  What is Asia?

  Isaac Neo

  Is the twenty-first century an Asian one? According to former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, this is entirely the wrong question to be asking.

• May 2026

  MamaInk and Wednesday Addams

  Taeyeon Song

  A trainee and the tattoo artists that she works with in a studio in Seoul reflect on craft, self-expression, and how upcoming changes in legislation will impact the evolution of both the culture and industry of tattooing in Korea.

• May 2026

  Writing back

  Bhuchung D. Sonam

  Packed with prose, poetry, stories, and reportage, Ocean, as Much as Rain is essential reading for all Tibetans and for anyone who wants to understand what it means to live under colonial occupation.

• May 2026

  Papa, are you okay?

  Alyssa Castillo Yap

  I strive to become someone breaking my back to harvest something better. A way to be home with my loved ones.

• May 2026

  Haircuts

  Varsha Sivaram

  In Singapore, queerness is considered an aberration—it jams up the works, causes panic and confusion. Numerous accounts of in-person discrimination support this, especially when it comes to hair.