Power and democracy
Sebastian Strangio
Hun Sen and his party have won every election since 1998
Category: Reviews
Cronies Inc.
Nick Freeman
When Aung San Suu Kyi stopped supporting US sanctions against Myanmar, it changed everything.
Tangled up in red
Chris Taylor
The US love affair with China is marked by cycles of exuberance and deflationary despair.
Unfinished business
Erik W. Davis
Cambodian politics are fundamentally nationalist.
About face
Michael Freeman
When literary critic William Empson turned his attention to Buddhist iconography
Dark mess
Alasdair Richards
Noir is a genre of fiction that delivers so little
Images of war
Oslo Davis
Such A Lovely Little War brings the Vietnam War to new audiences.
Tigerman
Wayne McCallum
Sooyong Park has dedicated much of his life to filming the Siberian tiger
Who is Duch?
Antonia D. Bryan
Duch ran a well-oiled machine. He processed people, personally approving every confession.
The second Panglong trap
David Eimer
In Myanmar’s borderland conflict zones, promises of peace are wearily familiar
Facework
Emma Larkin
How power in Thailand really works
The great leap
Peter Zinoman
Goscha’s Vietnam puts Vietnamese at the centre of their own history.
Wild pigs cannot enter
Giulio Ongaro
The Akha people of Laos once maintained a condition of statelessness.
Ocean of history
John Burgess
A new study questions whether Australian Aborigines were isolated after their arrival 40,000 years ago.
Refugee pain
Rupert Winchester
The Refugee is bold, bright and beautiful.
Threadbare
Gill Green
Enthusiasts will appreciate Devare’s book, but not experts in the field
Smuggling the bodacious
Hans van Leeuwen
We sit looking at the screen. “PM lauds communist youth” looks back at us
Sre Ambel
Jeff Kisseloff
For McCallum, it wasn’t enough just to write about the environment
Saving the garden
David Hutt
Dr Siri meets solemn and dogmatic cadres in Laos
It ain’t pho
Connla Stokes
My father’s improvised experiments with Vietnamese cuisine were declared a success
Out of the box
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnamese-American literature fulfills the function of ethnic writing
Derelict beauty
Cristina Maria Chiorean
The soul of Yangon reposes in buildings built by British, Indian and Chinese settler-traders
One Chinese
Chris Taylor
‘Do you speak Chinese?’ is akin to asking ‘Do you speak Romance?’
Benedict Anderson
John Sidel
Benedict Anderson left a prodigious legacy for Southeast Asian studies
The Bangkok plot
Luke Young
William J. Rust sheds new light on postwar Cambodia
Regeneration
George Chigas
A new generation of Cambodian writers are given voice in English in Modern Literature of Cambodia
Meatamorphosis
Rupert Winchester
Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a short, dark, depressing but brilliant novel
Aquarium life
Wayne McCallum
Intrigue, mystery, subterfuge, robbery and murder — think an exotic fish
More than just memory
Patrick Deer
Viet Thanh Nguyen tests the limits of fiction
The king still never smiles
Nicholas Farrelly
The enigma of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej
The Lady’s not for turning
David Eimer
Who needs friends when a whole country is in love with you?
Beauty scar
Pam Allen
Magical realism meets gritty realism
Sorrow in a shopping mall
Chris Taylor
The word “miracle” is bandied about far too much in the context of China
Lao hit ball
Robert Cooper
One sport has played a surprising role in defining Laos and the Lao — tikhi
The real thing
Connla Stokes
The undefinable, addictive nature of Vietnamese food
Death or freedom
Sebastian Strangio
Myanmar fell apart as soon as it became independent
Duras, mother and Cambodia
Penny Edwards
The life and work of Marguerite Duras
Defying Big Brother
Kenneth Wong
I came across a Winston Smith, a clerk who erased “unpersons”
Rituals and religion
Paul Fuller
The difference between lived Buddhism and Buddhism of popular imagination
Wayne’s wat
Jeff Kisseloff
Decades after Vietnam, Wayne Matthysse discovered why he was still alive