Mekong Review

Mommie dearest

David Scott Mathieson

Law-Yone’s penchant for the telling anecdote, the observation of, and connectivity to, the seemingly incidental, and the insight into the public and private personality makes this book a seminal contribution.

Let the dead speak

Fathima Cader

Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chats with the Dead is a darkly satirical novel with a good dose of the fatalistic humour Sri Lankans will find familiar.

Building an archive

Emi Donald

The Anjaree Archive preserves material collected over the decades by one of Thailand’s first advocacy groups for gender and sexual rights. But can an archive also tell the story of its own messy creation?

What we see

Stephanie Chok

In Now You See Us, Balli Kaur Jaswal has created a social world that magnifies the indignities and frustrations of everyday life as a migrant domestic worker in Singapore.

Intentional forgetting

Paul French

What a country doesn’t collectively talk about can often be more important than what it does. Tania Branigan’s book reveals the complexities of remembering the Cultural Revolution.

Land of smiles?

Stephen Gregory

Our growing Thai family, now into its fourth generation, has given us plenty of smiles and laughter… and outbursts of anger and stubbornness and exasperation.

Reinvention

Abby Seiff

For much of her adult life, Bacani has been known for her photojournalism. But she has extended her practice considerably—a constant reinvention.

Apathy and nonchalance

Loh Pei Ying

This could be After The Inquiry’s intention: to rile us up and stir a sense of indignation at a system in which the truth might not win out over politics and power

Fill in the blank

Johanna Costigan and Hannah Sage Kay

Since participating in a protest in China puts one’s safety in jeopardy, using a blank sign serves as a form of plausible deniability. It’s also consistent with the complex reality of memory and historical events in China.

Transformations

Alex Li

Shanghai has undergone three transformations in three years. First, it turned itself into a bubble, then it clamped down hard, monitoring every resident’s movements. Finally, it bounced back to normalcy, almost as if the previous years had been a fever dream.

To my 2019 self

Sean Tierney

A controversy—involving questions of privacy, consent, autonomy and censorship—began to develop around the documentary To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self, one that starkly parallels the Hong Kong government’s relationship with the youth.

Hope

Hina Husain

Not only did the promise of “Naya Pakistan” never materialise, the country is actually much worse off today.

Sporting attitude

Kirsten Han

Could distance runner Soh Rui Yong’s absence from Singapore’s national team point to something bigger about how things work? He thinks this could be a “good opportunity” to ask questions.

Burgess in the East

Michael Howard

In his memoirs, Burgess recalled Graham Greene telling him (not unkindly) that Time for a Tiger was an amusing but essentially frivolous book. Greene’s evaluation hasn’t stood the test of time.

Mekong apocalypse

Michael Buckley

A sordid saga of greed, corruption, desperate despots and out-of-control dam-building corporations—propelling the rapid demise of the Mekong River.

Peering around river bends

Emily Ding

I’ve often come to forks while travelling. Do I stop where I had planned to arrive, or do I keep going? Maybe if I go on a bit further, I might find something I have never quite seen, in quite the same way, before.

So close, too far away

Peixuan Xie

Mae Sot, Thailand, provides the anonymity a Burmese peace activist needs, although not without guarded boundaries and precarious undercurrents to navigate

Passport renewed

Benjamin Zawacki

Yo and Noom choose their books, in English and Thai, with care and purpose to ensure that Passport Bookshop has a clear identity and its patrons a quality read.

Reading Ma Sandar in Chiang Mai

Joe Freeman

It is especially important to pay attention to Myanmar right now, but the future of Burmese-language instruction in English is uncertain. Joe Freeman speaks with linguist Justin Watkins about his work.

Holding the line

Kirsten Han

It was hoped that social media would facilitate democracy. Today, we worry about misinformation polarising society and undermining democracy.

A professional amateur

Brendan Ryan

It’s hard to pin down exactly how to describe Đinh Nhung and what she does. Her work has spanned art installations, photography, curation and the compilation of lexicons of queerness in Vietnam.

Inshallah

Abhishek Mehrotra

Hindu-Muslim relations are worsening across India. There have been no rumblings of communal strife in Kadayanallur yet, but news from elsewhere creates ripples of anxiety and worry.

Conservation stories

Wayne McCallum

Lifting the stone on ‘Big Conservation’, Sarah Milne’s book demonstrates how conservation is inherently political—an effort to impose meaning on to landscape and people.

The dog days of Burma

Daniel Benowitz

When Oliver Slow writes that the Myanmar military must return to the barracks, he presumably means they should only be in the barracks. Readers may wonder if they were ever so confined.

Dictatorial power

Martin Laflamme

Chiang Kai-shek might have put in place measures that eventually led to Taiwan’s economic miracle, but political freedom for the Taiwanese was the last thing on his mind.

Operation Corporate

Salil Tripathi

What Philip J. Stern offers is a reflection on the nature of power—how organisations created to share risks and raise capital for economic activities ended up becoming a dominant force.

The road to Muse

Bryony Lau

What happens in a border town when the border is closed? Bryony Lau travels to Muse in Myanmar’s northeast and reflects on its history and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Observations of an American diplomat

Chong Ja Ian

Scot Marciel spent most of his time in service focused on one region. In Imperfect Partners, he brings readers through the evolution of US involvement and interest in Southeast Asia from Reagan through Trump.

Righting wrongs

Patrick Poon

Personal testimonies are always more powerful than hypothetical discussions, and Elaine Pearson’s extensive experience in investigating human rights abuses and advocating for positive changes serves as a practitioner’s handbook.

Unforgettable blood

Muyesser Abdul’ehed

Unable to write openly about repression, Uyghur writer Perhat Tursun resorted to symbolism, invoking visceral descriptions in his novel The Backstreets to convey a sense of disconnect and despair.