Of the 23 books I’ve reviewed in 2009, two novels stand out unambiguously. The best non-fiction titles are less clear, but it’s possible to make a tentative selection.
The top novel for me was Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (Vintage), and it was also the best book I read in 2009. It’s a feat of synthesis and evocation, and its guiding principles are aesthetic and stylistic rather than historical or social. Nostalgia, comedy and melancholy mix, and although the ostensible subject is cricket as played in New York City, the book also encapsulates confidence tricksters, an androgynous waif, a public procession, Holland, India and the London Eye. But it’s a love of New York that dominates the book, leading some critics to dub it the best thing that’s happened to US fiction in a decade.
Second came Ian Buruma’s The China Lover (Penguin, US). It follows the career, in fictional form, of the endlessly re-inventing Yoshiko Yamaguchi (aka Otaka Yoshiko, Shirley Yamaguchi, Ri Koran and Li Xianglan), film star and receiver of Japanese cinema’s first ever on-screen kiss. Using three different narrators, seasoned Japanophile Buruma depicts both the performer and the country with a perceptive affection, seeing both as capable of remarkable feats of self-renewal, and surveying half a century of Japanese cinema in the process. It’s a skillful balancing act, essentially researched history but highly competent as fiction as well. And Buruma’s knowledge of Japan is so extensive that he brings off the transformation with aplomb.
Political books about Asia made a strong showing. Mike Chinoy’s Meltdown (St Martin’s Press) is an account of relations between the US and North Korea, something Chinoy witnessed in person as a Korean-speaker and longtime correspondent in the region. It’s heavily critical of the handling of the situation by former US president George W. Bush’s administration, but also contains a large amount of information on North Korea over the last 20 years, together with many insights backed up by an in-depth understanding.
Lastly, Xianhui Yang’s (楊顯惠) Woman From Shanghai (上海女人—中國勞改場倖存者的故事) (Pantheon) is a heart-wrenching but highly readable account of one of China’s re-education camps for “Rightists” during the late 1950s. Told through the mouths of former inmates lucky enough to have survived (most didn’t), it’s shaped as 13 short stories, each as vivid as it is horrific. It’s the debut in English of revelations that first rocked China several years ago.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built