Long burned as offerings at Taiwanese funerals, paper homes are getting an upgrade
By Noah Buchan
Frank Hann (韓定) knew his wife's father was sick and that the time to buy him a house was quickly approaching. He spent some time looking at what the market had to offer, but didn't like the generic designs he saw. After failing to find the ideal home, he struck on an idea: he should build one himself.

[ FULL STORY ]

By Bradley Winterton
"I mean, this guy had his knife between my ribs and I thought, 'Go on then. Are you going to push it in or aren't you?'"

[ FULL STORY ]

Indonesia's swamps absorb greenhouse gasses when healthy, but once they dry out they become climate vandals
Viewed from the air, the vast, cool forests of the Kampar peninsula on Indonesia's Sumatra island are a world away from China's belching factories or America's clogged freeways.

[ FULL STORY ]

Peter Gay's 'Modernism' reads like a basic college survey of art from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, complete with random references to Freud
By William Grimes
Spoiler alert: The hero dies at the end, but shed no tears. Modernism, the artistic revolution that began with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire in the 1840s and quietly expired in the 1960s with Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, enjoyed "a good long run."

[ FULL STORY ]

By Janet Maslin
There are two genuinely honest characters in Roopa Farooki's fizzy debut novel, Bitter Sweets. One is named Candida, the other Verity Trueman. While these monikers may sound heavy-handed, Farooki makes them genially absurd by putting them in context. Everyone else in this boisterous, multigenerational tale is a congenital liar.

[ FULL STORY ]

[ FULL STORY ]