“One thing for sure. I never want to be an old ladyboy.” -a WoWasis transgender friend (2002) Veteran Asia writer James Eckardt has written a number of fascinating books on the Southeast Asian scene, and he’s a good writer, having worked for the Bangkok Post, The Nation, and the Phnom Penh Post. His working creds […]
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WoWasis Book review: ‘Tears of Autumn’ Vietnam spy fiction by Charles McCarry
Here at WoWasis, we love reading old books that we missed the first time around, especially when we discover something that we really shouldn’t have missed. We’ll bet you missed Charles McCarry’s thriller The Tears of Autumn (1974, ISBN 13-978-1-58567-890-7), too. That’s right, it was written in 1974, at which point many of the readers […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears’ by Randall Peffer
From our catbird seat here at WoWasis, it’s pretty clear that novelist Randall Peffer, in his Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears (2009, ISBN 978-1-60648-038-0), knows a few disparate worlds. The transgender world features prominently here, both in Bangkok and Cape Cod, as does the Portuguese fishing community of the Cape. Melding these worlds with police […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis Vietnam book review: Nelson DeMille’s ‘Word of Honor’
If you’re a U.S. citizen, when you visit Vietnam, you may be pleasantly surprised at the lack of animosity. After all, the Yanks tore up the country and killed a lot of people. Just how badly things go haywire under combat conditions in Vietnam is a story that sets the table for Nelson DeMille’s epic […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis sex book review: ‘She Comes First’ by Ian Kerner
Writing a book on oral sex techniques to be performed on women is a pretty serious undertaking. As Ian Kerner, Ph.D., the author of She Comes First: the Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman (2010, ISBN 978-0-06-053826-2) unveils, there’s a lot of there there. There’s a lot to like about this book, provided the […]
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: ‘Myanmar Buddha: The Image and Its History’ by Somkiart Lopetcharat
This very fine and comprehensive book on Burmese Buddha images is generally available only in Southeast Asia, so we here at WoWasis would advise putting it on your shopping list for your next trip. Somkiart Lopetcharat’s Myanmar Buddha: The Image and Its History (2007, ISBN 978-974-09-6065-2) carries a suggested retail price of $85 USD, and […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis banned book review: ‘Thailand Unhinged: the Death of Thai-Style Democracy’ by Federico Ferrara
This book has been banned in Thailand, and it’s easy to see why. It takes on the ruling class, the monarchy, and to a certain extent, denigrates the Thai people as well. With his Thailand Unhinged: the Death of Thai-Style Democracy (2011, ISBN 978-979-3780-84-9), author Federico Ferrara notes in his foreword that he’d self-censored his […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘A Golden Age’: Bangladeshi fiction from Tahmina Anam
The Bangladeshi War of Independence of 1971 forms the backdrop of a plethora of novels from that country, and Tahmina Anam’s A Golden Age (2007, ISBN 978-0-06-14787-1) is no exception. The book won a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book. It’s a coming of age tale, involving the evolution of a mother from a […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis banned book review: ‘Lajja (Shame)’: Bangladeshi fiction from Taslima Nasrin
Given that the nation of Bangladesh changed from a secular state to an Islamic country via a constitutional amendment, it’s easy to see why this book has been banned. Taslima Nasrin’s Lajja (Shame) (1993, ISBN 978-014-024-0511) is a strong indictment of the Islamic movement that made pariahs of its Hindu population. This is historical novel […]
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