About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Antony Dapiran
Positive The Asian Review of Books ... resists the temptation of trying to either predict the future or suggest that this story is finished ... This is a book aimed at those who kept one eye on the news, and now want a more detailed account. Dapiran does a good job of explaining some of the more complex aspects of Hong Kong’s political structure, and its relationship with Beijing, but generally eschews analysis in favor of this informative, linear account of events ... Perhaps what is most remarkable about City on Fire is the speed with which it has been written and published. It gives a sense of immediacy and lived experience which is powerful and compelling; there is a rawness to passages of the book, and a sense of the unresolved trauma that last summer marked. The book is at its best when we get the visceral, first hand experience of the protest movement ... It is not a fight which has universal support, as Dapiran notes, citing a poll showing 59 percent support for the protests in Hong Kong—but the book chooses to leave to one side any detailed investigation into what the other 41 percent of Hong Kongers think and feel.
Julia Lovell
Rave Asian Review of Books In her masterful and hugely ambitious global history of Maoism, Julia Lovell begins by using Mao’s own words to try to triangulate a definition of the term ... Lovell goes on to trace the various mutated forms of Maoism in a diverse range of countries where it inspired physical uprisings ... it feels right that Maoism returns us to China in its final chapter, as the well-spring of a political ideology oft-dismissed or derided in terms of its international influence which, Lovell persuasively demonstrates, has in fact played a significant and continuing role in shaping thought and action across the world.
Frank Langfitt
Positive The Asian Review of Books Langfitt is particularly good at slotting his subjects into the specifics of this Chinese and global era ... in reality the book is only loosely held together by the conceit of the \'Free Loving Heart Taxi\'. Yet, Langfitt is an amiable, informed correspondent, and there is much to enjoy here for those looking to learn about modern China: for anyone in a Beijing-bound cab from the airport, forget about probing your cabbie for some home-spun authentic wisdom, and enjoy a few chapters of The Shanghai Free Taxi instead.
Ma Jian, trans. by Flora Drew
Rave Asian Review of Books Ma’s writing echoes writers such as Borges and Kafka in its absurdism, but its imagery is also filmic ... It is a style which suits the modern China it depicts, matching both its concrete reality and its nightmarish illogicality ... the novel’s brevity is also one of its charms ... The vignettes which form each chapter offer brief but rich visions of the protagonist’s descent into madness, and the novel has a power, literary and political, disproportionate to its length ... a book which compellingly reveals the paranoia of the modern Chinese state.
Paul French
Rave Asian Review of Books ...The premise of City of Devils feels indistinguishable from that of a novel, but this is narrative non-fiction; French is up-front in his preface that, though historical accuracy has been his watchword, \'assumptions have been made\' where information is missing ... French is steeped in stories of old Shanghai, and his understanding of the time and period allows him to build a fully-realized world around his compelling characters. A large part of the book’s joy is in its detail: the fashion, the drinks, the drugs, the cars, the bars, the slang. French writes in a present-tense heavy, hard-boiled prose which consciously alludes to the crime novels of James Ellroy, peppering his description and dialogue with the patois of the time.
Frank Dikotter
Positive The Asian Review of Books The impressive array of evidence that the author has uncovered in the course of his research is marshalled in support of a single thesis: that Communist rule in China in its first three decades was nothing other than catastrophic on both a human and an economic level, and that the cause of the catastrophe was not the party as a whole, but rather—very specifically—Mao Zedong ... Despite Dikötter’s lucid explanations, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of the continual oscillations of political legitimacy in this period. It was, simply, chaos ... The Cultural Revolution is less reliant than the preceding texts on the archival material which made Mao’s Great Famine, in particular, such a groundbreaking work; here, the author prefers, as the subtitle implies, to illustrate his historical points with personal anecdote, often drawn from published accounts. This final volume, however, provides a compelling, lucid and authoritative delineation of this most labyrinthine revolution, and proves a fitting conclusion to Dikötter’s great project.