Little is known about Dmitri Alioshin, the author of this breathtaking tale of survival in the vastness of Siberia and Mongolia during the 1917-1922 Russian Civil War.
Presented alternately as an autobiography and a novel inspired by real-life events, Asian Odyssey dragged me along into the recesses of the war, its cruelty and misery, and the sweeping tides of history it evokes. But the vivid depiction of the landscape and the people nurtured by the region’s plains and mountains also lifted my spirits to soothing heights.
Whoever Alioshin might be, and whether he did indeed fight on the side of both the White and Red Russians, he left a haunting story.
The author, formerly an officer in the imperial Russian army, recounts the experiences of his hazardous flight through Mongolia to his father's home in Harbin after the fall of the Kerensky government.
I always thought that whales were partly human. When the Whales Leave confirmed my suspicion.
Inspired by the foundational tale of the Chukchi People of far-eastern Siberia, the story is a deep reflection on the interconnectedness between mankind and the natural world and on the forces that disrupted the equilibrium. In Yuri Ritkheu’s universe, whales used to come back near shore every year, spouting joy, wisdom, and love on their surroundings. Then they became silent. And I am left thinking about what we owe to these monarchs of the sea and may be about to forget forever.
Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her: with the fast breeze, the green grass, the high clouds, and the endless blue sky above the Shingled Spit. But her greatest joy is to visit the sea, where whales gather every morning to gaily spout rainbows.
Then, one day, she finds a man in the mist where a whale should be: Reu, who has taken human form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first humans become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on,…
I found some of Xi Chuan’s poetic incantations mind-blowing, even exhilarating.
I was nowhere near China when I read Bloom last summer. Yet, the book transported me in a whirlwind to its throbbing cities. I danced to their rhythms, became party to the contradictions of modern life and to the ambiguities of being Chinese in the twenty-first century.
The poet has such a way with words, which gush seemingly unrestrained onto the page, telling of a place in the throes of tubulent change.
"Bloom and change your way of living," Xi Chuan exhorts us. "Bloom / unleash a deep underground spring with your rhizome." In his wildly roving new collection, Bloom & Other Poems, Xi Chuan, like a modern-day master of the fu-rhapsody, delves into the incongruities of daily existence, its contradictions and echoes of ancient history, with sensuous exaltations and humorous observations. Problems of mourning and reading, thoughts on loquaciousness, Manhattan, the Luxor Temple and socks are scrutinised, while in other poems we encounter dead friends on a visit to a small village and fakes in an antique market. At one moment…
As a historian, I have always been drawn to the renegades of society, these men and women willing to defy conventions and adversity in pursuit of their vision of a better world. Geographical Imagination is about such a purposeful individual, a penniless Japanese who crossed the ocean in 1913 and spent eight years of self-imposed exile in a dislocated Europe before returning to the rising self-confidence of his home country. The book traces his travels, encounters, and ideological engagements as a non-violent anarchist and a staunch opponent of any form of authoritarian politics. His prescient and humane voice resonates with present-day relevance.
