My Lai
Michael Uhl
Was it the scale of the killing or the cover-up that made the My Lai massacre a scandal?
Category: Reviews
Re-reading Greene
Mai Huyen Chi
The passive Vietnamese in ‘The Quiet American’.
Turning east
Sebastian Strangio
What explains Southeast Asia’s periodic lurch to authoritarianism?
Post-1997
David Parrish
Hong Kong’s post-handover generation takes on the political system
Disobedient women
Norman Erikson Pasaribu
Intan Paramaditha subverts her country’s notions of womanhood.
Finding holiness
Fahmi Mustaffa
In search of the holy in Malaysia’s many faiths and cultures.
The prison poets
Joseph Woods
The story of the poets who survived Myanmar’s military regime
A lady of distinction
John F. Hartmann
Boonlua’s classic on the Thai aristocracy is a modern-day parable.
Bagan and beyond
Aedeen Cremin
How was Bagan built and how did it become a World Heritage Site?
China calling
David Eimer
Can Aung San Suu Kyi resist China’s influence? The generals before her couldn’t
A broken state
Sean Gleeson
The recent violence against the Rohingya continues a systemic attempt to strip them of their right to exist in Myanmar.
What China wants
Peter Tasker
China is back in charge in Asia.
River politics
Andrew Wells-Dang
Can anything be done to stop the rush of hydroelectric dams being built on the Mekong?
Reformasi, remembered
Kean Wong
Before the rise of conservative Islam in Malaysia, there was reformasi
Miserablism
Rupert Winchester
Modern-day India, where societal oppression is balanced by personal freedom
An earful
Peera Songkünnatham
How a poem about Yingluck Shinawatra’s ear shines a light on the patriarchal culture embedded in Thai folk tales.
Lost in translation
Liam Kelley
Ben Kiernan’s history of Vietnam gets lost in translation
Singing is listening
Michael Freeman
New poetry from Asia’s remote borderlands
Pulp horror
Tiffany Tsao
How Western reviewers missed the point of Eka Kurniawan’s latest work.
Fall for Saigon
Connla Stokes
Can Ho Chi Minh City survive the drive to transform it into little Singapore?
America’s amnesia
Thomas A. Bass
Why the US can’t make an honest film about the war it lost
Deep south
Abby Seiff
Amid the sectarian violence, life in Thailand’s troubled south resembles life everywhere else.
Too much democracy
T.F. Rhoden
Something is missing at the heart of Thai democracy.
On the move
Martin Stuart-Fox
Rapid urbanisation has transformed Laos from a backwater to a regional hub.
Exile wounds
Michael Freeman
Ocean Vuong’s poetry describes a world of memory, desire and violence.
Midday’s children
Rupert Winchester
Two new books labour under the shadow of Salman Rushdie’s masterpiece.
In parentheses
Philip Cornwel-Smith
The enfant terrible of Thai literature breaks rules and conventions to get to the truth
Back to Mandalay
Joseph Woods
How a poem laden with colonial clichés gained such a hold on the Western imagination.
Thread songs
Gill Green
How a French traveller stumbled upon the Miao and their textile culture
Peace matters
Christopher Goscha
How war could have been avoided in Vietnam
Frontier flux
David Eimer
How Aung San Suu Syi has failed to deliver peace to the borderlands of Myanmar.
Khmer ways
Jack Weatherford
Who wrote the only surviving written account of the Khmer Empire?
Narrative change
Michael Freeman
Can fiction help us come to terms with the pending problems of climate change?
Now we’re 50
Ooi Kee Beng
Is ASEAN a miracle? Or just a 50-year-old talkshop?
Intoxicated
Ross West
France extended its power in Vietnam by taking over the production of alcohol.
State rebels
Liam C Kelley
The Chinese outlaws recruited by the Vietnamese Nguyen Dynasty to fight against the French.
Milieu
David Payne
Nineteen young Vietnamese writers are showcased in a new collection of short stories.
On the street
Neil Moody
What is more important in street food – the food or the street?
Pinball wizardy
Rupert Winchester
The multigenerational family saga comes of age in Asia
The Rohingya
Julia Wallace
The long struggle for citizenship