A narrative account of the rise of the Asian city state by the FT's former Singapore correspondent, exploring both its extraordinary economic development and the authoritarian bent of its le... read more
The grandmother in question was Vietnamese, and exiled in the Vietnam war. A good-looking book on this healthy and nourishing cuisine. Has Ducasse's imprimatur so should be excellent.
A first collection by an Afghan poet, born in Kabul in 1990 and now a don at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Highly literate yet drawing on the story-telling traditions of her youth, Fayyaz tells of ... read more
A superb account of how European imperialism in Asia was undermined by a network of ingenious radicals, who used printing presses, global travel and the colonisers' languages to spread their... read more
Takes the reader from the earliest written accounts to the present in vivid portraits. The empress Masako is there, and presumably princess Murasaki Shikibu, whose diary is not only fascina... read more
The author has been travelling in China for 30 years. This is her first book, and it is a compelling portrait of the country's culture and its recent mutations.
Vintage Japanese crime fiction, by a master of the genre, first published in 1950: the head of a clan leaves a very peculiar will, and its reading is followed by a series of unusual murders.
This is the first publication of Hugh Trevor-Roper's private journal of his visit to the People's Republic of China in 1965, shortly before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. It also d... read more
A memoir of youth in Henan province and the liberating power of the pen, by a prolific Chinese writer still relatively little known in this country, despite a festoon of international prizes... read more