We’re old fashioned, those of us here at WoWasis. We like books that have left room to include a few blank pages at the end. Author Jerry Hopkins, one of the more prolific writers of the last few years, has written a compelling book that lacks those blank pages. It’s called Romancing the East: A […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'China' Category
WoWasis book review: Cold case murder solved in China: Paul French’s ‘Midnight in Peking’
Why should anyone today care about solving an expat murder in 1937 Peking? We here at WoWasis were skeptical too. But we took a chance on Paul French’s Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (2012, ISBN 978-0-14-312100-8) and were richly rewarded. It’s more than […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Dean Barrett’s ‘Pop Darrell’s Last Case’
Veteran Bangkok-based author Dean Barrett is always full of surprises. In addition to his Thailand beat, he’s been a New York-based dramatist, lived in Hong Kong for 17 years, and he’s served as a Chinese language specialist for a branch of the Department of Defense. Somehow, just about all of that has made in into […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Asian Godfathers, powerful, influential, dangerous business barons in Asia
For those of us who frequently travel to and do business in Asia, it becomes increasingly important to understand who the major players in the business world are, and how they have traditionally operated. Two books we here at WoWasis have reported on before are Martin Booth’s The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Dean Barrett’s ‘A Love Story: China Memoirs of Thomas Rowley’ historical erotica
Leave it to veteran expat western author Dean Barrett to put a new twist on Asia-based fiction. His latest novel. A Love Story: The China Memoirs of Thomas Rowley (2013, ISBN-13: 978-0-9788888-3-1) will make readers want to hold on to their hats (and scrotums) as protagonist Thomas Rowley, a western soldier in China, is captured […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Stephen Leather’s ‘Hungry Ghost’ from Hong Kong
Stephen Leather never ceases to tantalize us. It’s not just the vicious murderers or the fetching murderesses, either. Hungry Ghost (ISBN 978-0-340-96072-1), originally published in 1992 and re-released in 2008, is replete with all the cerebral stuff we’ve grown to expect from the author. His “no stones unturned” approach is something we figure he picked […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee on expensive, worthless American dating services
American dating services are expensive and worthless. Read why.
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Terra Cotta Army’ by John Man
The discovery in 1974 of some 7,000 Chinese terra cotta warriors and horses from the First Emperor’s reign circa 200 BCE is one of the outstanding archaeological finds on th twentieth century. Several of these statutes have been on tour of U.S. museums, most recently at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum. John Man’s landmark book, […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Revisiting Han Suyin’s ‘A Many-Splendored Thing’
Han Suyin died in November of 2012 at the age of 95. Her book A Many-Splendored Thing, published in 1952, was the basis for the film starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones, and has influenced numerous writers. A recently written book, Janice Y.K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher, is probably one of those. So we went […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Piano Teacher’ by Janice Y.K. Lee
After finishing Janice Y.K. Lee’s ‘The Piano Teacher’ (2009, ISBN 978-0-14-311653-0), we went scurrying back to Han Suyin’s landmark novel of 1952, A Many-Splendored Thing. There are similarities, to be sure. The setting for both is pre-1955 Hong Kong, and they are essentially love stories that revolve around the unsettled military, political, and social situation […]
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