Backlist books: The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin and Gao E

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about The Story of the Stone (aka The Dream of the Red Chamber), a sprawling work about a boy born into a wealthy household only to witnesses its gradual decline as he grows into a young man.

Written in the mid-1700s, this classic Chinese novel (one of the Four Classic Chinese Novels, in fact) was circulated as an incomplete manuscript before its publication in 1792, when forty additional chapters were added to the original eighty.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read The Story of the Stone, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

Lion City lit: Lancing Girls of a Happy World

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Our regular column Lion City lit explores in-depth what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise.

Local publishing house Ethos Books has just launched Lancing Girls of a Happy World by Adeline Foo

Lancing is a Singaporean pronunciation of dancing, and the book is an account of the cabaret girls of yesteryear. In the late 1930s, the first wave of Shanghainese glamour girls arrived to join the cabarets in Singapore. Another wave came following the Communist Revolution of 1949. These Chinese migrants influenced local women to join the cabaret as professional dancers, too.

500 words from Ivy Ngeow

Proverse Hong Kong is a publishing house with long-term, and expanding, regional and international connections. This week sees a double bill of posts about Proverse. Yesterday, Gillian Bickley, Proverse co-publisher, talked about the company's aims, and development. Today, Ivy Ngeow, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize for Fiction, talks about her new novel, Cry of the Flying Rhino, which is published by the company.

Ivy was born and raised in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, but she studied in London, and her work - journalism and fiction - has appeared in many publications in Malaysia, Singapore, and the UK

Cry of the Flying Rhino is set in 1996, in Malaysia and Borneo. It is told from multiple viewpoints and in multiple voices. Malaysian Chinese family doctor Benjie Lee has had a careless one-night stand with his new employee – mysterious, teenage Talisa. Talisa’s arms are covered in elaborate tattoos, symbolic of great personal achievements among the Iban tribe in her native Borneo. Talisa falls pregnant, forcing Benjie to marry her. Benjie, who relished his previous life as a carefree, cosmopolitan bachelor, struggles to adapt to life as a husband and father. Meanwhile, Minos – an Iban who has languished ten years in a Borneo prison for a murder he didn’t commit – is released into English missionary Bernard’s care. One day, Minos and his fellow ex-convict Watan appear on Benjie's doorstep. Now Benjie must confront his wife’s true identity and ultimately his own fears.

So, over to Ivy…

Proverse Hong Kong by Gillian Bickley

Proverse Hong Kong is a publishing house with long-term, and expanding, regional and international connections. The company administers the international Proverse Prize for Unpublished Non-fiction, Fiction and Poetry, which is open to writers everywhere, irrespective of residence, citizenship or nationality.

This week will see a double bill of posts about Proverse. Tomorrow, Ivy Ngeow, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize for Fiction, will talk about her new novel, Cry of the Flying Rhino, which is published by the company.


Today, Gillian Bickley, Proverse co-publisher and Proverse Prizes co-founder, talks about the company's authors, books, origins, aims, and development.

Book of the Year of the Rooster

Asian Books Blog runs its own literary award: the Asian Books Blog Book of the Lunar Year. We are about to confer the award for the Year of the Rooster, now drawing to a close.

Asian Books Blog highlights books of particular interest in, or especially relevant to, Asia, excluding the Near West / the Middle East.  The award thus highlights such books. Authors can be of any nationality, and can be published anywhere, either conventionally, or through self-publication – an important route for new voices in Asia, especially in the many countries within the region with limited publishing industries. Self-published titles are eligible in eBook format. Traditionally published titles must be available in a physical format, either hardback, or paperback. (Although they were eligible, no self-published books have been included on this year’s shortlist.)

Be happy, whatever you celebrate!

Granted there are parts of Asia where nobody celebrates Christmas, but Asian Books Blog is following a conventional Western pattern, and closing for the holiday-for-some season. We'll be shut from now until January 12, when we'll be back with the announcement of the shortlist for the Asian Books Blog Book of the Lunar Year in the Year of the Rooster.

In the meantime, several recent guest contributors, and also some of our regular contributors, have shared their thoughts on books they'd like either to give as a Christmas gift, or else to receive in their own Christmas stocking. All the books have an Asian theme, of course. Check out their suggestions if you are looking for something to read yourself, or else stuck for an idea about what to give to somebody who seems to have everything.

500 words from Todd Crowell

500 words from is an occasional series in which authors talk about their newly-published books.

Todd Crowell is an American journalist. He has worked for news magazines in Asia for over two decades, with stints in Hong Kong, Thailand and now Japan, where he serves as country correspondent for Asia Sentinel. He has written three earlier books: Explore Macau; Farewell, My Colony: Last Years in the Life of British Hong Kong; and Tokyo: City on the Edge.

There is no single Asian language, of course, but The Dictionary of the Asian Language explains facets of Asian life, culture, arts, politics, and business through exploring words from Asian languages now being absorbed into English. The bite-sized entries are funny as well as informative, they include: discussion of a flower named after former North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il; the Chinese word shengnu, literally leftover, for the new phenomenon of unmarried women over thirty; explication of the differences between jeepney and jilbab, and between yakuza and yellowshirts.

So, over to Todd, to talk about The Dictionary of the Asian Language...