Chick Lit and Chinese Pirates - Latest Book Picks

thebeijinger — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0800

I Sailed With Chinese Pirates
by Aleko Lilius

The Pearl River Delta in the 1920s was a lawless place, with bands of pirates hijacking ships, kidnapping villagers, and extorting money from fishing fleets – when they weren’t hiding out in opium dens and gambling houses in Macau. In those days, when “adventurer” was still considered a profession, Finnish-American Aleko Lilius described his dramatic journey aboard a heavily armed pirate junk and his imprisonment in a Hong Kong jail.

Book Reviews: May 2009

thebeijinger — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:00:00 +0800

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

Enough with the China books already – it’s spring. Time for a thick juicy paperback novel to read in the sun. The Hakawati is worthy – a tale from a faraway land written in prose so smooth and vibrant the imagery leaps from the page. The novel gives fresh voice to age-old tales from the Middle East that have been passed down orally by hakawatis (Arabic storytellers) for centuries: the Eye of Fatima, the birth of Mecca, the story of Antar. The stories are woven together with the present-day tale of a man returning from the US to his family in Lebanon. Moving from modern-day Beirut to a time when Baghdad was simply where all good poets went to die, the narrative easily jumps from horseback to hospital room, from demon’s lair to a deserted car dealership. Alameddine gives us Middle Eastern history and culture wrapped in elements of intrigue as old as storytelling itself – bravery, beauty, adventure and adversity. EC

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Chick Lit and Chinese Pirates - Latest Book Picks

Book Reviews: May 2009