The unmarried, and childless Briggs is the object of mirth and pity of the Sinhalese,she journeys around the Teardrop Island, inadvisably for her, but entertainingly for us on public transport. With the civil war recently ended and the effects of the devastating tsunami as ever present context Briggs entertains and educates. Her hapless inability to select decent guides or drivers results in her taking us vicariously to places we would never reach otherwise.Not to be read if your offspring are contemplating a gap year in Ceylon.

    Hela has powers too strong for a child – both to feel the pain of those around her and to heal them. But when she is given a mysterious cup by a slave woman, its powers overtake her life, forcing her into a vow she cannot hope to keep. Trapped by her vow, Hela loses one chance after another to love and be loved. Meanwhile in her household a child is growing into a woman who will become famous throughout the Muslim world. So begins a quartet of historical novels set in Morocco as the Almoravid Dynasty sweeps across Northern Africa and Spain, creating a Muslim Empire that endured for generations.

    PENINSULA is a personal memoir amounting to a report on the generational changes Malaysia has undergone since Independence, examining their roots in the past and implications for the future, by one who lived through them.The narrative unravels the many strands of Malaysian history and how they braided themselves into this nation as it is in the 21st century, each contributing to the whole while striving to remain true to itself.

    Accused of crimes against humanity, they have brutally mistreated their people. Yet in the last couple of years, and in spite of sham elections, the pace of change has been breathtaking. Much is now hoped for. However, Burma is one of the most ethnically diverse nations in SE Asia: there are roughly seven major ethnic groups living along its borders. They have a long history of conflict with the government and have been cruelly treated by the current regime. Their future affects the country as a whole, as Benedict Rogers explains. Drawing heavily on his many fact-finding visits both inside Burma and along its frontiers, he gives a unique appraisal of the current ethnic situation and its implications for the nation as a whole. Wide-ranging, expertly researched, and full of brand new accounts of the courage and determination of the Burmese people, Burma: a nation at the crossroads explains the country's conflicted history, as well as its contemporary struggle for justice. Burma stands poised for freedom, or for further repression. No one can be sure. This fascinating and accessible book describes what is really happening inside this beautiful, secretive, and potentially prosperous country.

    Celebrated today as one of the world's greatest exponents of non-violent political defiance since Mahatma Gandhi, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize only four years after her first experience of politics.In April 1988, Suu Kyi returned from Britain to Burma to nurse her sick mother but, within six months, found herself the unchallenged leader of the largest popular revolt in her country's history. When the party she co-founded won a landslide victory in Burma's first free elections for thirty years, she was already under house arrest and barred from taking office by the military junta.Since then, 'The Lady' has set about transforming her country ethically as well as politically, displaying dazzling courage in the process. Under house arrest for 15 of the previous 20 years, she has come close to being killed by her political enemies and her commitment to peaceful revolution has come at extreme personal cost.In November 2010, after fraudulent elections in which she played no part, Suu Kyi was again freed. She was greeted by ecstatic crowds but only time will tell what role this remarkable woman will have in the future of her country.

    Years later, now a newspaper reporter, she returns to gain a deeper understanding of the lives of sex workers.Daughters of the Red Light is a searing look at the poverty, injustice and stigma that keep entire families from escaping India's notorious sex industry. Seervai takes readers to Mumbai’s grittiest alleyways to discover the stories of these women and girls. As she unravels the brutal web entangling them, she finds an unexpected reason for hope. ABOUT THE AUTHORShanoor Seervai is an Indian writer and journalist. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, Guernica Magazine, The Caravan and The Indian Express. Born and raised in Mumbai, she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is pursuing an advanced degree in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.EARLY PRAISE FOR DAUGHTERS OF THE RED LIGHT"This is a meaningful and important piece of writing that contributes in a significant way toward understanding the lives of sex workers and their families and how we might help alleviate their marginalization and suffering. Shanoor Seervai's book shows you the humanity of the mothers and children in the red light district, as she takes you on her journey of discovery into their world and her place in the world at large. It gave me new insight into the lives of the sex workers and their children, and how the tireless work of some offers real hope—the greatest gift of all."— Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Cure"Most writing about India's underbelly treats people as passive victims. It is far too easy to find stories of misery in Indian cities and hold them up as one-dimensional examples of the country's uneven progress. Shanoor Seervai does not do cutouts. She dives into the world of Mumbai's sex workers, introducing us to real women with families and dreams we recognize. She brings the reader along for her journey, which is journalistic as well as personal, as she navigates the gender norms and class divides of urban India with sharp observations and true empathy. I've been visiting Mumbai all my life and feel I understand it better having read this heartfelt work."— Shashank Bengali, South Asia bureau chief, Los Angeles Times"A thought-provoking headlong dive into a little known culture."— Sonia Faleiro, Award-winning author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars."With this honest and insightful memoir, Shanoor Seervai peels back a tattered curtain to reveal the complex and brutal world of Mumbai’s commercial sex trade. Through her eyes, we begin to really see the women — and children — behind the makeup. Through her journey we are challenged to consider our common humanity; and our own, personal response to the injustices that land (and keep) millions of the world’s most vulnerable children in the hell we call the 'Red Light.'"— Laura Entwistle, Founder and CEO of EmancipAction, an international non-profit organization working to end child sex trafficking around the world

    As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked, leaving only two survivors and one tiny child.In a neighboring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is strapped into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military brothel where she is forced into sexual slavery as a "comfort woman." After sixty years of silence, what she saw and experienced still haunts her.In the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is sitting beside his ailing grandmother when he overhears a mumbled confession. He sets out to discover the truth, wherever it might lead, setting in motion a chain of events he never could have foreseen.Weaving together two time lines and two very big secrets, this stunning debut opens a window on a little-known period of history, revealing the strength and bravery shown by numerous women in the face of terrible cruelty. Drawing in part on her family's experiences, Jing-Jing Lee has crafted a profoundly moving, unforgettable novel about human resilience, the bonds of family and the courage it takes to confront the past.

    Brings together interviews with more than eighty survivors to recount one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War, the 1967 campaign in the mountains of Dak To, during which members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade found themselves caught up in a deadly struggle against overwhelming odds, often cut off from supplies, communications, and reinforcements.

    When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls “a master storyteller.”

     It also explores the circumstances surrounding the true-life event of my grandmother's gift of a concubine to my grandfather on his birthday to enhance the chance of an heir to the Family.

    Written with an infectious passion, this is an extraordinarily original and genre-defining piece of travel writing by one of our most highly respected travel correspondents.

    At fourteen, she finds herself traded in marriage to a stranger across the ocean in the fascinating land of Malaysia. Duped into thinking her new husband is wealthy, she instead finds herself struggling to raise a family with a man too impractical to face reality and a world that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful. Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to wrest from the world a better life for her daughters and sons and to face every new challenge with almost mythic strength.By sheer willpower Lakshmi survives the nightmare of World War II and the Japanese occupation -- but not unscathed. The family bears deep scars on its back and in turn inflicts those wounds on the next generation. But it is not until Lakshmi's great-granddaughter, Nisha, pieces together the mosaic of her family history that the legacy of the Rice Mother bears fruit.

    This novel gives, as no fiction account about Thailand has yet done, insights into Thai life, particularly that of rural Thailand. Foreign writers writing about the Thai people look at Thailand from the - outside", but Pira Sudham writes about his people and country as seen from the - inside," thus giving us a fascinating work.

    Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she’s settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her world appears to open when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to a life of domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill’s duty is that of a servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction in the proper womanly arts. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out, but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody, and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider’s knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice.Suzanne Kamata's work has appeared in over one hundred publications. She is the editor of The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press on parenting children with disabilities. A five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she has twice won the Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest.

    It was in their steep Himalayan villages that McHugh came to know another culture, witnessing and learning the Buddhist appreciation for equanimity in moments of precious joy and inevitable sorrow.Love and Honor in the Himalayas is McHugh's gripping ethnographic memoir based on research among the Gurungs conducted over a span of fourteen years. As she chronicles the events of her fieldwork, she also tells a story that admits feeling and involvement, writing of the people who housed her in the terms in which they cast their relationship with her, that of family. Welcomed to call her host Ama and become a daughter in the household, McHugh engaged in a strong network of kin and friendship. She intimately describes, with a sure sense of comedy and pathos, the family's diverse experiences of life and loss, self and personhood, hope, knowledge, and affection. In mundane as well as dramatic rituals, the Gurungs ever emphasize the importance of love and honor in everyday life, regardless of circumstances, in all human relationships. Such was the lesson learned by McHugh, who arrived a young woman facing her own hardships and came to understand--and experience--the power of their ways of being.While it attends to a particular place and its inhabitants, Love and Honor in the Himalayas is, above all, about human possibility, about what people make of their lives. Through the compelling force of her narrative, McHugh lets her emotionally open fieldwork reveal insight into the privilege of joining a community and a culture. It is an invitation to sustain grace and kindness in the face of adversity, cultivate harmony and mutual support, and cherish life fully.