Glimmers of Shanghai’s modernity in a 19th-century courtesan novel.
Out of the squalor and into the light: When the Shanghai wall came down
Confucius and opium
An investigation of intoxicants in the time of Confucius.
The expat and the prostitute: Four classic novels, 1956-62
Reviews of McKenna’s The Sand Pebbles, Mason’s The World of Suzie Wong, Arsan’s Emmanuelle, and Reynolds’ A Woman from Bangkok.
Isham Cook on Twitter
Novelist, essayist, satirist, literary provocateur, polyamorous pansexual China-based anti-Trump American expat.
Foreign devils on the loose in China: A review
How Quincy Carroll’s Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside stacks up against other recent China expat classics.
Lotus: Updating the great Chinese socialist realist novel
Satirical review of the latest addition to Chinese socialist realist fiction.
The 1.3 billion-strong temper tantrum: Review of Arthur Meursault’s Party Members
Why this vicious satire of contemporary China that’s causing readers to gag had to be written.
