Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu and Christine Mathieu (Back Bay Books)

lake1

When adolescence strikes us, are we guaranteed to long for something beyond what we have? Even in her home village, “where children could roam at our own will and visit from house to house and village to village without our mothers’ ever fearing for our safety” and where a woman could be certain she would not be forced into marital servitude by an oppressive husband or sullied by sexual scandal, Namu still yearns for something beyond these freedoms.

Perhaps matriarchy is not what we expect. That thing we call matriarchal culture is more accurately labeled as matrilineal descent model, and is neither inherently matriarchal nor egalitarian. Taking a thorough look at the Moso peoples’ complicated social structure, Namu’s story shows us that even her female-driven culture maintains a male-dominated public presence, wherein the culture is represented solely by men through trade and travel. Of course, proximity to bridal abduction rituals and other obviously male dominant practices of the Yi culture highlights the Moso feminism, which allows women to not only own property, but to control household politics, take and refuse lovers at will and have uncontested custody of children.

Despite Namu’s relative freedom as a woman, the culturally conditioned instruction given by her mother resembles caricatures of American housewives in the 1950’s. Emphasizing traditional models of female domestic leadership, Namu’s mother says: "You're a woman, you belong in the house, to the village. Your power is in the house. Your duty is to keep the house, to be polite to old people and to serve food to the men." The younger woman feels trapped by these expectations and by the gender division that allows women power in the domestic world of home and village but still insists that “only men could leave their mothers’ houses, and even they never left just to fulfill their personal ambitions.”

After getting a taste of the world beyond her village, Namu returns and receives a coveted employment position and seems destined for local fame. But she has already realized that her ambitions are much larger than her village can sustain. By pursuing her own unorthodox ambition, Namu rebels against more than her own mother; she rebels against cultural expectation and responsibility. It seems evident, though not explicitly acknowledged, that her ability to sustain ambition and to succeed relies upon the influence of her mother’s own rebellious spirit. The headstrong mother produces an even more fiercely headstrong daughter. It is this inheritance that is the most important and the most difficult to face.

Namu’s story is one about growing up and finding her own place in the world. She brings us from halcyon days in her mountain village, where she is barely touched by the Cultural Revolution that rages through China, to the experiential instruction she receives in the beauty and hardship of the world beyond Mother Lake. The storytelling is lively and maneuvered between the book’s two authors, providing readers with the character depth and the cultural context that makes Namu’s coming of age unforgettable.--by Kristianne Huntsberger

Jasmine Nights by S.P. Somtow (St. Martin’s Press)

jasmine2

When I worked at the Elliott Bay Book Company I was always in search of titles to recommend for twelve to fourteen year old boys. These recommendations had to be something more than the popular wizard series or the classic adventures of Verne and Kipling, whose language could be difficult for some young readers. If I were working at that bookstore now, I would be sure to have Somtow’s novel on hand.

Though not billed as a young adult book, Jasmine Nights is a perfect fit. The hero, Justin, is nearing thirteen years of age and learning the life lessons imparted by his crazy family, his crazy morphing body, and the crazy world in 1960's Bangkok where he has been deposited by his parents and where he learns about friendship, love, family and himself.

Inspired by his spunky and irreverent great- grandmother, Justin begins planning his Pinocchio transformation into a real boy. His first adventure on this course belies how far he has to go to meet his goal, which lies somewhere at the end of a list including tree climbing, swimming naked in the khlong and saying nasty words, “whose meaning I am only now starting to guess at.” His first act is kleptomania, but his shoplifted object is a Penguin Classic copy of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Justin’s journey continuously skirts this line between his romantic, literary inclinations and his directed assimilation into even the darkest corners of the “real world.”

Like climbing trees and skinny dipping, issues of race, class and cultural conflict have never before entered Justin’s imagination until he met his African American neighbor, Virgil and becomes attracted to Virgil’s natural boyishness and his commitment to the young and painful cultural history that his family carries. It is the painful portion of Virgil’s heritage that takes the stage as the expat children begin their school year and racial tensions flare.

When Justin discovers that a Boer classmate’s best friend back in South Africa was black he asks why, then, should he and an American boy from Georgia be so cruel to Virgil. It’s different, the American boy explains, “I used to hang out with [black children] too, sometimes, but they knew better’n to piss in the same toilet or sit in the front of the bus. It ain’t that I’m prejudiced or nothing, Justin, it’s just, well, we don’t belong together.”

Justin is overcome by it all and by his own participation in the classist prejudices of his culture, noting that “there is a terrible wrongness in the world but that I am powerless to correct it. There is a disturbance in the dharma of the cosmos.”

Luckily, the book does not flatten the issue. Justin sees that, above all, it isn’t an easily definable problem since each of the boys “is the victim of a self-perpetuating cycle of injustice.” It isn’t the fault of any of them individually, he notes, “It’s the whole forsaken universe, locked in a maze without doors, all of us, each one of us and island, each one of us alone.” As part of his transformation, Justin takes it upon himself to right these great wrongs.

Perhaps the most significant weight that leans this novel toward the young adult market is the lively treatment of this very weighty subject and the fact that the hero succeeds.—Kristianne Huntsberger

Bringing Tony Home by Tissa Abeysekara (Scala House Press)

Kristianne Huntsberger, a soon-to-be Bangkok resident, looks at memory and identity through the eyes of a Sri Lankan writer.

The epigraph to Bringing Tony Home is taken from a dialogue with the Buddha, in which a man asks, "If I die and am born again as you say I will be, is that, which is reborn, the same me?" The Buddha replies that it is "neither you, nor yet any other." Tissa Abeysekara writes that, likewise, his book, "being truth recreated through memory, is neither true nor untrue." It is a collection of stories grafted with autobiography. Memory and fiction come in and out of focus the way that a sweeping camera pans over an expansive landscape where a small figure traces a road along the railroad tracks.

Locating identity within memory and the recorded history of his mid-twentieth century home in post-colonial Ceylon is a daunting task for the narrator, a boy from a privileged native family whose fortunes failed after World War II. He recalls a British fighter plane crash in 1942, and his memory of watching the wounded pilot being carted away in a hackney. His mother considers this a constructed memory because he had been only three years old "and according to her it is not possible to remember that far back and over the years I came to doubt it myself, but now I remembered the scene once more and it seemed quite real and if it was otherwise like Mother suspected, it didn't seem to matter anymore.". The family is forced to leave behind the "Big House" and the red Jaguar and Tony, the faithful family dog. The boy's mother would have him learn to adapt and his father would have him hold on to the former world. These stories explain the consequences of this division, evidenced in the narrator's internal and social struggle. When revisiting the native home of his grandmother he encounters a monk on the mountain who asks, "'from where are you?' This question in my language implies much more than your place of residence. It wants to know your origin." This is the question the narrator pursues and the one that provokes the deep introspection of Abeysekara’s stories.

When the narrator rescues his dog, marching him the distance between the abandoned Big House in Depanama and the poor one in Egodawatta, or when he rejects his father’s gift, rediscovers his adolescent lover or travels to the central hills where his grandmother was born, we understand that we are being shown more than just these incidents. We are following the narrator as he learns, finally, the meaning behind the episodes in his life. There is clarity in the distance he has gained and in remembering things past, much like glimpsing the sea from the mountaintop. As the monk he encountered near his grandmother's home explained, after years of looking, it will happen suddenly: "through that little break in the long line of hills, like through the eye of a needle, I saw the water, blue and glistening like a crest gem. Ever since then I see it. I need glasses to read, but I see faraway things." Abeysekara paused in the middle of his life to reflect on a world he no longer recognized and which had ceased to recognize him, and to glimpse the world he was unable to see before that moment.

After receiving word that Abeysekara had passed away in April of this year I re-read Bringing Tony Home. Returning to the book as tribute to the man's nostalgia, I found my own. Between the pages I had left a bus transfer and a strand of hair--a gray one--that I lost while reading a passage in which the narrator unpacks the story of his own birth, faced with entries from the diary his father kept that year. How does one react to the unraveling of one’s own myth? By recognizing the contradictions of our fathers as our own, Abeysekara answers. The relationship then between fiction and fact in these stories is the same as in the lives we live. We re-member and re-read and re-live our memories to make meaning.

Tokyo: City on the Edge by Todd Crowell and Stephanie Forman Morimura (Asia2000)

Ernie Hoyt, Tokyo resident, unearths a different sort of guidebook that illuminates his hometown.

I can't help but love Tokyo, as it's been my adoptive city for almost fifteen years now. But to have visitors appreciate what some people have described as an urban metropolis, concrete jungle, city that never sleeps, city of contrasts or safest city in the world and a number of other cliches, it's nice to find two authors who share my special love for this city. They are Todd Crowell and Stephanie Forman Morimura. Crowell lived in Tokyo during the '50s and returned as a military intelligence officer in the '60s. He currently resides in Hong Kong where he writes for Asiaweek. Morimura moved to Tokyo in 1980 to work for the International Education Center on a two year contract. She met and married a Japanese national and made Tokyo her home.

I should point out that this is not a guide book to Tokyo. It does not have a listing of what's the best place to eat or where the cheapest place to stay can be found. It's about the city as a whole. The authors describe Tokyo as a "collection of villages" where each neighborhood has its own character and charm. It's a city in which twenty private railway lines and a dozen or so subway lines transports its million- plus dwellers to and from work everyday. A city in which the world's 500 largest companies are found,100 of which have their head offices here.

If you came to Tokyo as a first- time visitor, you would most likely land at Narita International Airport, located forty-five minutes outside the city by train. Once leaving the terminal, you would be surprised to see miles of rice fields and farmland, not the sprawling city of concrete you might have imagined. Once you board the train headed into town, the first major site you will see would be Tokyo Disneyland - however, you will still not be in Tokyo proper as Tokyo Disneyland is located in Chiba Prefecture.

You might also be surprised to find that in 1943, Tokyo was abolished as a city. It has become Tokyo-To which includes outlying suburbs and a few islands off the coast.

Tokyo Proper consists of 23 wards that each have a character all of their own. A few are introduced in this book to give an idea of the diversity of the city. In Arakawa Ward, you will find the last remaining Ding-Dong Trolley. It runs from Minowabashi to Waseda. In Sumida Ward, just north of the Ryogokukan (the building where sumo bouts take place), is a monument dedicated to those lives lost in the Great Kanto Earthquake and Fire of 1923 and to the victims of American firebombing in 1945 during World War II. (Although the book does not mention where this is, I went searching on my own and discovered it to be in a place called Yokoamicho Park.)

To get a glimpse of Tokyo's X Generation, all you have to do is head to Harajuku and Shibuya in Shibuya Ward. Not only will you find the latest in teen fashion, but you will find a host of gourmet restaurants as well. In Shinjuku Ward, you will come across Hyakunincho-- which plays home to Russian hookers and the Yakuza at night while by day it's a bustling Korea Town.

You are also introduced to some other neighborhoods that have their own claim to fame. Den-En Chofu is one such place, considered the Beverly Hills of Tokyo. Another is Yanaka-- where the residents fought to preserve old neighborhoods and buildings, and now use them as ateliers and boutiques. There is the Odaiba District -- Tokyo's waterfront city which could be compared to New York's Coney Island.

For anybody with an interest in Tokyo, this will be a delightful trip through an amazing place. I'm still finding new places to explore and new things to experience-- even after spending fifteen years in the middle of this wonderful city.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Picador)

Asia By the Book is delighted to receive this review from Ryan Mita, former bookseller at Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company, a traveler who has volunteered his time and energy in South America and Asia, and a librarian-in-the-making.

In a shabby cottage in Central Japan lives a brilliant professor of mathematics, who wears a plain suit and moldy shoes. Handwritten notes are clipped onto every inch of his suit, tangible reminders of his identity. The most important note reads: "My memory lasts only 80 minutes." His new housekeeper is a single mother, an empty person who agrees that she contains a zero inside.

The housekeeper and the professor make an unlikely pair, joined by her son, nicknamed Root for his flat head. The professor will handwrite a note to remember their presence: "The new housekeeper…and her son, ten years old."

The plot unfolds unhurriedly as Ogawa skillfully blends little victories into larger, more painful setbacks. The housekeeper treats her son and the professor to see their beloved baseball team, the Hanshin Tigers. Root idolizes the current team and the professor had memorized the team's statistics until 1976, the season of the car accident that impaired his memory. This exciting shared experience will press the professor to the limits of exhaustion. After returning to the cottage, he develops a fever and slumbers for three days.

The housekeeper remains by his bedside, nurturing the professor back to health. However, the professor's sister-in-law reports this rule violation to the agency and the housekeeper is assigned to another client. As she mops the floor at a tax consultation office, she begins to believe in mathematics and "the sense that this invisible world was somehow propping up the visible one." Soon after, Root reaches out to the professor and the housekeeper is invited back.

During the hot summer, the professor devotes himself to solving a problem posed by the Journal of Mathematics. After two months of quiet concentration, the puzzle is completed and the housekeeper takes the proof to the post office. Satisfied, she purchases a few clean items for the professor and returns to the cottage in 70 minutes. The professor does not recognize her and begins their relationship again with the question: "How much did you weigh when you were born?"

Although his mind is mathematically keen, the professor's true gift is his ability to draw people together. For his elegant proof, the journal awards the professor first prize and the small family sets out to find a suitable gift. They decide to add to the professor's nearly complete baseball card collection. Together, the mother and son will crisscross the streets of an unnamed city in Hyogo prefecture. They will ride the "dingy elevators" seeking the elusive piece. And as they search, a new world opens up for Root, a world he shares with his friend and mentor, the professor.

One of the fascinating aspects of this novella is the clear and natural voice Ogawa writes with. Her voice allows Ogawa to create a pace, unmarred by actual names or specific places. Her seemingly simple plot hints at a larger story, like the intricate details in the foreground of a vivid painting, and makes The Housekeeper and the Professor a quietly astonishing book.

To Myanmar With Love: A Travel Guide for the Connoisseur edited by Morgan Edwardson and photographs by Steve Goodman (ThingsAsian Press)

Myanmar is often in the news and often for reasons that make people determined that they will never set foot in the place. To find any information about what lies beneath the government's actions and policies or the latest national disaster takes such effort that the casual inquirer is likely to give up long before any results are found. And yet a lingering desire to know about the people, the culture, the daily life of this much-maligned country continues to tease curiosity, unsatisfied--until now.

"You have to go," the editor of To Myanmar With Love was told by a traveler, "It's such an amazing place and the people are so sweet." Morgan Edwardson put aside his qualms and set off to see Myanmar for himself. He was so delighted that he "returned three more times in the following year. Each visit was unforgettable." He goes on to say that the people of Myanmar, "not the government, are the focus of this book."

And they are--as contributors to the essays in the book as well as the subjects of the essays, generously and wholeheartedly eager to share their country and their culture with the outside world. As one Myanmar citizen said, "Show people that my country is not some sort of hell."

This book does this so well and so vividly that readers will race through the essays, vicariously savoring noodles with Yangon gourmet Ma Thanegi, having a traditional teashop breakfast with Win Thuya in Bagan and other places, carbo-loading with Giles Orr before tackling the sightseeing glories of the Shwedagon Pagoda. With Robert Carmack they will explore the colonial glories of the Strand Hotel in Yangon, learn the pleasures of being derailed in Bago with Peter Walter and a friendly railway clerk, and watch the launching of fire balloons that are three stories high with Anne Marie Power in the Shan State town of Taunggyi.

Breakfast with 2,700 monks in the company of Morgan Edwardson, explore a forest where spirits reside with Hpone Thant, visit a market where not a single souvenir can be found with Guillaume Rebiere where "colors, fragrances, and sounds are all sewn together into a patchwork." Deep sea dive in the Myeik Archipelago with Graydon Hazenberg, find the elusive Ayeyarwady dolphins with Hpone Thant and learn how these extraordinary creatures help the local fishermen. Take a bicycle, a boat, a pony cart, a trishaw, or a slow, slow train. Learn the joys of chewing betel or the casual elegance of wearing a longyi or savor the sweetness of tamarind flakes dissolving on the tongue.

The two features that appear in every volume in the To Asia With Love series of guidebooks are particularly outstanding in this book.

Paying It Forward: Suggestions for giving back while you're on the road reminds readers that "a donation can include more than just money." Viola Woodward tells how travelers can help spruce up schools and monasteries with a coat of fresh paint by supplying the paint and the labor. Sudah Yehudah Kovesh Shaheb's chance encounter with beach vendors leads to a visit to their homes and a trip with then to Yangon. Jan Polatschek tells how to teach English at monasteries while passing through town. Kyaw Zay Latt explains how to help in orphanages, with a list of places to visit with addresses, and Janice Neider provides a list of items to give children instead of money or candy,

Resources for the Road offers a variety of annotated reading lists, suggestions for language learning materials, a wonderful essay on the bookshops of Yangon by James Spencer, and a comprehensive list of informational websites. And throughout the entire book, Steve Goodman's photographs reveal the faces of the Myanmar people and the beauty that is found in their country.

To go or not to go? That is a choice we all are free to make on our own. To know or not to know? For years we have had little-to-no choice in this matter. Now we can choose, and with that choice, now we can know the culture, customs, cuisine, as well as the luminous and gracious people, of this isolated country.

Available at ThingsAsian Books

More books on Myanmar at ThingsAsian Books

Getting Wet: Adventures in the Japanese Bath by Eric Talmadge (Kodansha)

From Tokyo, Ernie Hoyt examines Eric Talmadge's plunges into different forms of the Japanese bath.

<br In 1981, Eric Talmadge set off for an adventure to the Land of the Rising Sun, not knowing that he would live there for the next twenty- plus years. While working for the Associated Press in Japan, he was assigned to cover the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, held in a place famous for its hot springs and giving Talmadge the brilliant idea of writing about Japan's onsen (hot springs).

In Japan, bathing is serious business. Hot springs are everywhere, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sento (public bath houses). But this book isn't a guide to the best hot springs or the cheapest sento. It’s one man's immersion into Japanese culture to find out why the Japanese are so obsessed with taking a bath.

The first spot Talamadge visits is Ikaho, a small town whose livelihood depends on its hot springs. In Japan, there is a law governing the use of the term onsen. The waters must be natural and must be at a certain temperature. Although Ikaho had been a popular hot spring destination for many years, in 2004 the town’s main attraction received some unwanted attention.

News broke that a lot of the ryokans (Japanese inns) were not properly maintained. A few places were topping off their baths with tap water or adding mixtures to make the baths look as if they contained more minerals than advertised. This was shocking news to the public at large, and the uproar closed down at least three of Ikaho’s inns. But the uproar became only a minor burp with Ikaho still a popular ryokan destination.

Aside from the meals served at a ryokan, a popular feature is the rotenburo - the outdoor bath. Before the arrival of Western modesty, most of these were communal—there are still some communal baths out in the country. But don't expect to be dazzled by young babes in the buff. The users are usually older women.

A ryokan isn’t the only place to enjoy an outdoor bath, Talmadge discovers on the sparsely populated island of Shikine, a part of Tokyo that is an eleven-hour ferry trip from the mainland. Shikine’s special hot springs are carbonated pools of iron sulfide. Their touted medical benefits may be questionable but they are definitely relaxing. However a dip in one of these sulfide pools may ensure a ripe odor for the next couple of days.

For those who feel they cannot afford to stay at a hot spring or find that the ryokans are a little out of the way, there’s a traditional Japanese bath that won’t cost as much but that may take a little courage to experience – the sento.

This is the public bathhouse, a vanishing feature in Japan, like drive-in movies in America. While not a spot that treats patrons like royalty, it’s quite relaxing.

Shy people can enjoy the sento experience by going to a super-sento – a public bath theme park—where communal areas require a swimsuit. Bathers can choose a milk bath, a sake bath, a rose water bath or a bath that will take them back to the days of the samurai.

The onsen can be recreated at home with bath products called “Japan’s Famous Hot Springs” which will turn any bathtub into the mineral waters of Beppu, Izu or other popular resorts. So instead of taking a quick shower, lie back in the tub for an onsen experience and let all the daily troubles drain away.

Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong (Penguin)

Large countries have frontiers, and these are places where myths are born. America has its far West and China has the steppes that are the gateway to Mongolia. Both places have given rise to legendary men, the U.S. cowboy and the nomadic horsemen whose forbears rode with Genghis Khan to conquer the northern half of China, and subsequently much of the known world.

Chen Zhen is a student of history who comes to Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution with two boxes of banned books and a strong sense of curiosity about the world around him. Becoming fascinated by the nomadic hunters whom he lives with, Chen apprentices himself to an old man who still holds a leadership position among his people and whose knowledge is encyclopedic.Slowly Chen learns the importance of wolves to nomadic culture and how these animals are both highly revered and fiercely fought against.

While searching for the key to Mongolian military conquests, Chen begins to attribute this feat to the wisdom the Mongols have learned from the wolves. The strategies used by wolves to track down prey and elude human cunning Chen sees mirrored in the hunting skills of the nomads who surround him and in the accounts he has read of Mongolian battle campaigns. in an attempt to learn more about an animal whom he feels has shaped history, Chen kidnaps a wolf cub to raise as his own and to observe in a scientific manner.

He doesn't expect to fall in love with the small wolf, or with the wild beauty of Inner Mongolia's grasslands. Nor does he remember the warning that each man kills the thing he loves.

This novel is written by a man who lived much of Chen Zhen's fictional life. Jiang Rong volunteered to work in Inner Mongolia in 1967 and lived there until 1978. He adopted an orphaned wolf cub (a far more benign acquisition than Chen's abduction)and raised it and obviously loved it. His eleven years on the steppes are conveyed quite beautifully in this novel--a love letter to a vanished world--and the account of Chen's spiritual odyssey rings true on every level, even when it is cruel and thoughtless, as well as when it is lyrical.

The novel in many ways is an environmental lamentation and an indictment of empire building and manifest destiny that at times threatens to swamp the story but never does. It is an amazing book to come out of China, where it "sold in the millions--in both authorized and pirated editions". It would be interesting to know whether Chen's philosophic reflections and the unsparing descriptions of the Han Chinese settlers were included in the Chinese edition, and how the omission of these portions would alter the pace and focus of the novel. Would the adventure of Mongolian wolf hunts and the haunting beauty and sadness of Chen's relationship with the baby wolf make a better novel without the didactic discursions? Read Wolf Totem and decide for yourself...

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer (Knopf)

Kristianne Huntsberger, bookseller emeritus and professional nomad, from wherever she may be at the moment, sends a review of Pico Iyer's examination of one of the most revered men in the world.

How are we to think about the Dalai Lama, the Nobel laureate, the king kept from his country, the spiritual leader, the pop culture darling and the unswerving voice of global compassion? In the past half- century the Dalai Lama has been thrust onto the world’s stage, first as a fairy tale prince driven from his home and now as the beatific wise man who has charmed billions of people across the globe. Because the Dalai Lama maneuvers a variety of roles, a biography of him is a daunting task. Seasoned travel writer Pico Iyer rises to the challenge in his newest book, which, far from inappropriately simplifying the Dalai Lama’s life, instead concentrates on the complexity of all the interpretations and expectations of him.

Drawing on experiences from his 30-year acquaintance with the Dalai Lama, Iyer addresses both the public and the personal life of the monk, the politician, the philosopher and iconic figure of both tradition and change. We learn the history of Tibet’s entry into the global neighborhood and the Dalai Lama’s reactions to these changes. We see crowds come like moths to flame and see the man grow tired, or long for the simple life of a monk.

Ultimately, Iyer considers the Dalai Lama a doctor in our global neighborhood who is trained to heal specific ills. His focus lies less in our physical human ailments than in our spiritual needs and his strategy is distinctly focused on showing us how important our own role is in our healing. The Dalai Lama is thus a good doctor, according to Iyer, because “a doctor’s paradoxical wisdom often is to make himself redundant.” He strives to inspire each of us to take control of our own health, either by using the tools and advice he gives us, or by going ourselves to the source.

The future looms as Iyer follows the Dalai Lama through Japan, Canada, the United States and back to his exile home in Dharamsala. There is a palpable question that lies between everyone who works closely with the Dalai Lama: What will happen when he is gone? Will we succeed in adopting global policies of compassion? Will the Chinese government install a political puppet in the Dalai Lama’s place? He has done what he can as a philosopher, a politician and a global icon but, in the end, he must simply hope that the wisdom he has prescribed will be taken to heart, and that his country and the world will recover from their maladies. Meanwhile, he continues to pray for his Chinese brothers and sisters daily and he turns out each light when he exits a room because, he tells Iyer, even such a small gesture can have effect, especially if more people in more rooms remember to do this.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Random House)

Kristianne Huntsberger, a writer, a performance artist, a folklorist, and one of the world's true booksellers, joins Ernie Hoyt and Janet Brown at Asia By the Book.

At the raw end of the Cultural Revolution, three years after Chairman Mao's death and the Gang of Four's arrest, the residents of small-town China are reeling from the upheaval, trying to decipher some meaning to their lives. Yiyun Li takes us into the private world of the people of Muddy River, where a dozen appropriately charming and idiosyncratic characters grapple with problems, both personal and patriotic, which arise following the public execution of Teacher Gu's daughter, Gu Shan. A former pioneer of Mao, Shan’s public doubt of communism brands her a dangerous counterrevolutionary. For her dissension, and the threat she poses to society, she is killed. But the people's commitment to these demonstrations is not as fervent as it once was and the seed of doubt is transferred to them.

Shan's death reminds each character of his or her inescapable fate. Identity is unalterable and we are confined both by our past and by the popular perception. The novel's Shakespearian fool, Bashi, notes that his perceived idiocy is "one of the rare crimes for which one could never get enough punishment. A robber or a thief got a sentence of a year or more for a crime--a stolen purse--but the tag of idiot, just as counterrevolutionary, was a charge against someone's very being.” For these charges one cannot serve time and gain reconciliation with society; the sentence of one's identity is final.

We see the characters trying to escape these identity confines, trying to see new possibilities and to alter the course of their lives. There is a scent of change, a flicker of hope and some unidentifiable potential. Ultimately though, it is Teacher Gu's dark voice of reason that shadows the actions of all the others.

When Mrs. Gu, fed up with the injustice of her daughter's death, the inability to perform proper mourning rights, and the overall sense of confinement, reaches her transformative moment, she is brought down by her husband's determined acquiescence: "'What I own is my fortune; what I'm owed is my fate,'"Teacher Gu answered. The words sounded soothing and he repeated them one more time to himself in a low chanting voice. His wife did not reply and shut herself in the bedroom."

Teacher Gu recognizes the utter hopelessness of their human condition and the commonality of suffering, wherein every action is as hopeless as the letters that he mails to his first wife, which are intercepted, surprisingly passed through the censors, and dropped unopened upon the desk of the woman who lies dying in a hospital bed somewhere out of reach.

Yiyun Li's language is rich and her characters charming for their deeply human flaws. Already acknowledged with several awards, including a Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a PEN/Hemingway Award, Yiyun Li skillfully blends personal exploration and social commentary. She calls upon her memories of China, which she left in 1996, to create an authentic and complicated story of a country and its people.

Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter by Shoko Tendo (Kodansha)

From Tokyo, Ernie Hoyt offers a new reading suggestion with his review of a highly original memoir.

Many people think of the Yakuza in its simplest terms - the Japanese mafia-- an image they've probably learned from bad Hollywood films or Takeshi Kitano movies such as "Brothers" or "Dolls". While it may be true that the Yakuza controls most of the red light districts, as well as having a hand in loan sharking, money laundering, and gun running, it is also an established part of Japan's society, although most Japanese would rather not talk about it.

Now there is a chance to explore the world of the Yakuza through the eyes of someone who was not only part of that world but was born into it. The daughter of a local Yakuza boss, Tendo feels that the literal meaning of yakuza is "rooted in a territory, taking care of a territory" and that the Yakuza are akin to a closely knit family.

In elementary school, Tendo becomes aware that she is treated differently from other kids. Parents of her classmates tell their children to avoid playing with her. At school, she is bullied, called "that yakuza kid," and treated as an outcast.

One day while cleaning the classroom floor, Tendo hears a teacher say,"Shoko Tendo? She can draw, and maybe her basic reading is OK, but that's about it. There's not much you can teach an idiot like that."

The other teachers laugh, responding,"You're not kidding." Only then do they discover that Tendo has overheard them. They quickly change the subject and praise her for cleaning the classroom, teaching her early on about the Japanese practice of "tatemae" or being two-faced.

As she gets older, Tendo becomes a yanki, a slang term for kids who defy authority and cruise around town causing trouble. She starts sniffing glue and quickly moves on to speed, becoming an addict by the time she's twelve.

As a teen, she escapes a near- rape from one of her father's underlings and learns to avoid his associates. However she suffers beatings from older members of her gang who don't like her attitude and think she's namaiki--impertinent and needing to be taught a lesson. Trouble catches up with her. She is sent to a reform school but once she gets out she reverts to her old habits and her old friends.

During the bubble years of Japan's economy, Tendo becomes a nightclub hostess. In love with a customer who happens to be married and has no intention of leaving his wife, Tendo believes this man will eventually get a divorce. She realizes that this is not going to happen only after he tells her that his wife is pregnant.

With the death of her father, Tendo reacts by thinking about her future, working harder than ever at the nightclub, and saving money. She reaches her goal of ascending to the position of Number One hostess and then quits with the intention of becoming a writer.

A woman with no qualms about who she is or where she's from, Tendo tells an inspiring story of how she survived the Yakuza--and escaped it.

Her book has become a bestseller in Japan and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes by Shoba Narayan (Random House)

What we eat is at the heart of who we are. It shapes our stories as completely as it shapes our bodies and defines our cultural worlds. In the United States, a certain post-war generation is bound together by the memory of canned creamed corn and Campbell's chicken noodle soup, as firmly as those a few years older are by the mention of powdered eggs. It is an unfortunate truth that none of these iconic culinary emblems are more than marginally edible.

And then there is the food that pervades the life of Shoba Naryan: flavorful, enticing, sumptuous dishes that are not just part of her existence. They are the substance and heart of her life. From the moment that she was taken to a Hindu temple for the rice-eating ceremony that marked her first meal, where she spat out the initial morsel because the clarified butter that had been stirred into the rice was burnt, food envelopes the milestones of her life and gives them a dimension of voluptuous, succulent, and bountiful pleasure.

When Shoba's mother becomes pregnant with her second child, she and her small daughter move back to her parents' home for the final stages of gestation. Shoba's mother takes to her bed where she is given "milk spiked with saffron, ground almonds and jaggery or cane sugar" rather than the calcium and iron tablets that serve the same function, and her favorite foods are brought by friends and relatives,who believe that "feeding a pregnant woman was akin to feeding God." It's impossible--if you're female-- to read about this incredibly civilized form of prenatal care without feeling overwhelming waves of envy and a longing to be born Tamil Brahmin in the next life.

After Shoba starts school, every lunch hour becomes a wildly exciting picnic, with little girls sharing bite-sized pieces of their biriyanis, appams dipped into stews of vegetables, cashews and coconut milk,mango pickles, idlis, with the girls with the best lunches reigning over everyone else.

Trips on the night train take on the same feast-like quality, with passengers sharing their food with nearby strangers: roti stuffed with spiced potatoes, sweet-and-sour buttermilk soup, spiced kidney beans. Vendors at stations along the way sell mangoes, milk sweets, and "thick yogurt in tiny terra-cotta pots." Travel is one long delightful culinary adventure.

Although food is the predominant feature of her daily landscape, Shoba cooks her first full meal only when a successfully prepared vegetarian feast will allow her to accept a fellowship to a U.S. university. While her family is confident that she will never be able to pull this off, Shoba has grown up eating, marketing, and watching her mother cook. She prepares food so luscious that reading about it causes an immediate trip to the closest South Indian restaurant and eating it guaranteed that Shoba's family will permit her to leave for America.

The stories in this memoir are as irresistible as the food that underpins it. Murdering New York goldfish leads to a frenzied taxi ride to replace them and an instant friendship and a fabulous meal with a taxi driver from Kerala. An eccentric sculpture professor opens up an undreamed of world of experimental art, lesbian friends and a wasp-nest of outraged Southern academics. And who would ever dream that an unconventional, outspoken artist who has lived for five years in the States would return home and find true romance in an arranged marriage?

You may not wish you were Indian as you gulp down this delicious memoir, but you certainly at times will wish you were Shoba Narayan, if only so you can eat the way that she does. Since twenty-one recipes garnish her anecdotes, this is easy to accomplish. But to have her sense of humor, flair for description, and adventurous spirit? Maybe in the next life!

Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith by Brandon Wilson (Pilgrim’s Tales)

Asia By the Book is delighted to be joined by reviewer and book omnivore, Ernie Hoyt, a bookseller for the past 21 years who continues to work in the industry in Tokyo. You can read more of Ernie's book reviews at Ern's Monthly Page Turners on his bilingual blog http://tokyoern.blogspot.com where he also shares his passion for eating in Tokyo and beyond

What's a couple to do after completing a journey from London to Cape Town during which they didn't end up killing each other in the process? To attempt what no other Western couple has done before. To walk the 1000-kilometer pilgrimage trail from Lhasa, Tibet to Katmandu, Nepal. However every travel agency they went to told them it was impossible, or out of the question, or that the Chinese government would never allow it. But those two words -– "can't" and "impossible"-- were just the catalysts needed for Wilson and his wife to make their trip a reality. This book recounts their odyssey.

After checking with a number of travel agencies and being told the same thing over and over again, "It can't be done", "That's impossible", they found a travel agent who was able to help them. Trekking in the Himalayas is no slice of cake, so they trained by climbing the mountains near Vail, Colorado. When all their necessary documents had been approved, they started their journey by flying to Lhasa. It was here where they got a firsthand look at the lives of the Tibetans and their struggle against oppression and prejudice. When the Wilsons discovered that walking this trail is forbidden to Tibetans, it only strengthened their resolve to accomplish their goal.

Their plan was to travel 35 kilometers a day and to reach Katmandu within a month. That plan was shattered after their first couple of days trekking. But instead of giving up or hiring transportation, the Wilsons went in search of buying a pack horse. It was as if they were given Herculean tasks that they would have to clear before reaching their next step. But with faith being their strongest bond, good fortune came upon them again. They found and bought a horse that was to be their companion. A Tibetan horse named Sadhu, which also happens to be the word for a "holy man". How is that for a good omen?

What started out as an adventure soon became a matter of survival. Armed with a dated and nearly useless map and their ever-present faith, they had to endure blizzards, sandstorms, high altitudes and being shot at by careless Chinese soldiers, who claimed they were shooting at birds -- for sport. They also had to worry about restocking provisions and feeding and resting their horse. The further they trekked from Lhasa, the villages became fewer and farther between and they found themselves having to rely on the kindness of strangers.

As they reached the border, they had only one concern -- would there be any trouble in taking their horse with them? Their dilemma was solved by not claiming anything when crossing the border and by not mentioning that they had a horse as a companion. As the border was quite crowded with a line of vehicles, the border guards virtually ignored them. They also unwittingly passed the Nepal Veterinary Checkpoint. Wilson and his wife might not be able to free Tibet from China, but they were able to free at least one Tibetan -- and that would be their constant companion, Sadhu.

This is an inspiring and unforgettable journey--you will be glad you made the trip.

Highways to a War by Christopher J. Koch (Minerva)

What leads people to that spot on earth that forever claims them? How are people drawn from one obscure corner of the world to another that absorbs them so completely that they become consumed by it? How do a time and a place intertwine to become so powerful that decades later they are still conjoined?

Saigon, Phnom Penh, 1965-1975-- two cities that flourished and floundered and fell in the same decade, and thirty years later, certain music and flavors and shades of light can bring these years and these places together again, dancing and dying in the memories of those who had been there.

Once upon a time, a boy from Tasmania came to Singapore with a camera, a tape recorder, enough money to live on for a month, and fell into Asia, its "wave of smells" and "sun which pours over him like a thick and scalding soup." He watched it all through his camera, he began to starve, his money dwindled. Sick and delirious, he was inexplicably rescued by a man obsessed with history and with a ravenous appetite for details from the present. "You'll show your appreciation eventually...," the boy was told, "There's a quid pro quo for everything in this life: haven't you noticed that yet?"

Given an opportunity, Mike Langford became a journalist who was legendary for his daring, his luck, and his love for Vietnam, where "laughter was like breathing" and where "youth casually vanished." Through Hardwick, his mysterious benefactor, Langford met Madame Phan, half-French, half-Vietnamese, who introduced him to a commander of the ARVN, the Army of South Vietnam, in the Mekong Delta. The company was in a region called the Cradle, and it was there that Langford began "a life that would last for a decade, and die with the war."

Other journalists stuck with American troops, "eating ice cream in the field and flying back to Saigon for a shower and a change in the evening", but Langford, from his first patrol, became one with the ARVN. He showed the world the faces of Vietnamese troops on the front lines, how they fought and how they died, until the commander of the company he photographed was killed by American "friendly fire" and Langford moved on to Phnom Penh.

A city "of charmed peace" "which no longer exists, which will never exist again," Phnom Penh attracted journalists "like a whole mislaid life" that was both exotic and familiar. The war lay beyond, down the highways, and photographers and reporters traveled to it in taxis--or in Langford's air-conditioned Mercedes. The battles were removed but real and children- turned -soldiers died in them. Beyond the highways, American B-52s dropped thirty-seven tons of bombs in a single year, destroying villages and sending rural Cambodians to the ranks of the Khmer Rouge.

As the war drew closer to the Cambodian capital, Langford drew closer to the war, as he fell in love first with Phnom Penh, then with its inhabitants, and then with a Khmer journalist whose fierce love for her country fed Langford's own passion for it. "He's losing his professionalism," a colleague said, "He's picking up the gun."

What happens to a man when a country that he deeply loves falls, and the woman he loves is still within its borders? What happened to Mike Langford, and will anyone really know what he paid when the quid pro quo came due?

A novel that is steeped in research, with a number of titles cited in the introduction that could form the core of a Southeast Asian studies program, this is a book that recreates history while it creates unfading characters and a dazzling view of the countries that they inhabited, however briefly but fully. Find it, read it, keep it.

Evening Is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan (Houghton Mifflin)

If there is one thing that literature has taught us, from Anna Karenina to The Corrections, it's that unhappy families are as much alike as happy families are. But while happy families are bound together by congenial mealtimes, festive holidays, and shared affection, unhappy families are linked by lies, unspoken secrets, and every conceivable kind of abuse.

This is the familiar territory that forms the terrain of Preeta Samarasan's first novel. A marriage founders, the children learn that whatever love comes their way will have to come from each other, a grandmother dies, an accusation is made, and a scapegoat's life is destroyed. From the first page, the story is obscured by things untold, which seem both deeply sad and sadly ordinary when disclosed at the novel's end. Yet what raises this book above the usual dysfunctional drama, what makes it rich and textured and darkly funny, is its setting and its surrounding community.

The crowd of characters that fill these pages wouldn't be out of place in the works of Dickens, while the titles of the chapters pay clear homage to that master of English prose. And the author tells us, "It is obvious how sharply parts of this land must have reminded the old British rulers of their faraway country."

But the "grey mist, glowing green hills" and "the violent silver ropes" of rain are in Malaysia, and the people who give the story such dazzling life are Indian, Chinese, and Malay. Some of them are ghosts.

The lonely and brilliant baby of the family, six-year-old Aasha, is the only one who can see the spectres, but there are many things that only Aasha sees and only partially understands. Her adored older sister has abandoned her, in spite of all she has done to prevent this, in spite of the huge and terrible lie that she has told to keep Uma, and Uma's mysteriously removed love, at home with her. Slowly and gradually, as bits and pieces of family history fall into place, it becomes plain why Aasha's heart has "cracked and cried out in protest."

As the jigsaw of tragedy comes together, so do unforgettable, wildly original characters, who would be minor if they weren't so indelibly drawn. Kooky Rooky, the neighboring kept woman, whose origins change each time she chooses to divulge them; Mrs. Surgeon Daisy Jeganathan, the social-climbing gossip with the "late-night, bridge-party laugh"; the dimwitted Anand who "cannot quite count to twenty" but is possessed by the spirit of his dead five-year-old sister once a year and becomes a celebrity prophet who speaks in a child's voice. None of these people are likable, yet they are instantly real and weirdly lovable.

The most real and the most lovable entity is Malaysia. An avowed wanderer and expat, Preeta Samarasan evokes her homeland vividly--its odors, its streetfood, its sun "liquid as an egg yolk", its "bloody ballet" of history, its "flourishing, mixed-up, polyglot" character shaped by its various ethnicities--and without it, this book would verge upon soap-opera territory. With it, it verges on a book that Charles Dickens would envy.

The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher J. Koch (Vintage)

There are some novels that haunt you with a single paragraph, a few well-chosen words.

As our world appears more and more unstable and unpredictable, statements of fact carry the same credibility as fortune cookies and entrails of chickens divulge as much as the pronouncements of experts. In these times, the following paragraph holds a special resonance.

"There is a definite point where a city, like a man, can be seen to have become insane...It's always difficult to believe that someone we know has crossed into that territory where no one from our side can reach him and from which messages crackle back that no longer make any sense...That's how it was with Sukarno's Jakarta..."

The Year of Living Dangerously was made into a movie that has become so iconic that its plot has been boiled down into the triangular relationship between Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, and the eerily androgynous Linda Hunt. These three actors have so thoroughly claimed this novel that it is a shock to read it at last and find they are not its central characters. There is only one main character and that is the city of Jakarta, seen through the eyes of journalists who struggle to interpret it to a world that can barely find Indonesia on a map.

These are men who report what they see, hear, and have been told, retreating at the end of the day to an airconditioned hotel bar that they have claimed as their turf. A competitive and jangling community, they drink, tell stories, and cling to each other's company. Jakarta intrudes upon their little sanctuary only as far as they allow it to, and only one of them ventures far beyond it after work--Billy Kwan, the half-Chinese, half-Australian dwarf who searches for his home in the world.

A man of restless intellect, Kwan is an explorer of ideologies, of people, of places, a photographer whose images define his questions. A comic figure to his journalist colleagues, he recognizes a spirit similar to his own in a newly arrived reporter, Guy Hamilton, and offers to be Hamilton's eyes.

As Billy leads Hamilton into Jakarta, the city takes on details, but never a shape, much the same as the antagonistic policies of Indonesia's leader, Sukarno. Poverty and danger lie in Jakarta's shadows, as well as the strained tension that mounts with each of Sukarno's speeches. Confrontation is the prevailing theme, and as Sukarno becomes more and more impassioned and his enemies are found closer and closer to home, no one feels safe.

In a city filled with foreboding and menace, disaster seems to be the only possible outcome. Love dissolves into mistrust, friendship into betrayal, and why this is happening is as much a mystery as how it will all end. Physical descriptions pinned to a page with words are the only concrete truth, and those descriptions are where this novel soars.

Sukarno is deposed, half a million people are slaughtered, the journalists are sent to the next global hotspot, and Jakarta goes on living. The place that is evoked so tangibly by Christopher Koch remains, unconsumed by its year of insanity and uncertainty. Decades later, our twenty-first century world, caught in its own insane and unncertain epoch, perhaps can find comfort in Jakarta's survival.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic Books)

"These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies."

Balram Halwai is a boy from a family of men with small bellies, who is singled out by a school inspector as a white tiger, "the creature that comes along only once in a generation." What is taken up as a jeer by his classmates becomes a cruel joke to Balram when he is forced to leave school to crawl around a teashop, cleaning up spots and spills--and listening.

This is Balram's gift. He listens, he absorbs, and then he acts. Learning that drivers are in high demand, he takes driving lessons and sets off for Delhi, where he quickly lies his way into a job driving for a man whom he comes to idolize. "Eight months later, I slit Mr. Ashok's throat."

This is the first forty pages of a novel that explodes into tiny fragments the myth that globalization means the world will be as one. Balram is not a John Lennon aficionado, and imagination is not a quality that intrudes upon his consciousness. His background music is Sting, Enya, Eminem, and if he has any belief in anything, it is in the power of observation and pragmatism.

This is why he tells his story. After hearing that the Premier of China is coming to visit Bangalore "to know the truth...to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success from their own lips", Balram begins a long letter to Wen Jiabao to explain his own entrepreneurial success.

At first, his saga seems a triumph of black humor, the shaggy dog story of the unreliable narrator. His fate is as much cast in stone as it has been for any man spawned from what Balram terms "the Darkness." His devotion to Mr. Ashok is unwavering; his feeling that Ashok's Western education has changed his employer's feudal background to one that is guided by justice and integrity threatens to change his own cynicism. But upbringing and family history prove to be a strong force, Ashok becomes corrupted, and Balram puts a stranglehold on his moment of opportunity.

"Speak to me of civil war, I told Delhi.

I will, she said.

Speak to me of blood on the streets, I told Delhi.

I will, she said."

Asok achieves his dream by slitting one man's throat. He gains the luxury of writing his own story; it is not, as his father's was, "written on his body, in a sharp pen." His laughter is loud and bitter and pointed. His life, as he reveals it, is a prophecy for those who choose to listen and a sentence--perhaps--for everyone, whether they listen or not.

Myanmar Architecture: Cities of Gold by Ma Thanegi and photographs by Barry Broman (Marshall Cavendish)

What most of us know about Myanmar could be tattooed on the abdomen of a mosquito. When we try to learn more about the country, the books that most easily come to hand are either highly political, highly outdated, or highly unreadable.

Who would ever think that one of the best introductions to Myanmar, its culture, and its history would be found in a coffee table book, that genre which is usually very pretty, examined once for its remarkable photographs, and then is ignored until it's time to donate something to the next church rummage sale?

Myanmar Architecture: Cities of Gold does indeed have remarkable photography but the writing is what makes this book extraordinary. Ma Thanegi, author of the travel classic, Native Tourist, is a writer whose sentences sparkle with vitality and humor, and she uses that gift to make the history of her country more enticing to read than many novels are.

With forms of architecture serving as her structure, Thanegi leads readers through time, recreating the life of her country throughout its history, from its ancient and turbulent early kingdoms where temples were built and monarchies were elevated and toppled in bloodsoaked succession, into its imperial days of glory before the forces of Western imperialism barged in and took over, bringing with them their Victorian towers and turrets, dripping with gingerbread trim.

The lost civilization of Pyu that flourished for seven centuries and then vanished, leaving few traces of a people who were so devoutly Buddhist that they would not wear silk because "it involved taking of life"; Bagan, which, legend says, once held 4,446 temples, of which "today, ten centuries later, 2,230 remain"; Amarapure, where in 1795 a British envoy witnessed a daily two-hour procession of elephants, horses, servants carrying their masters' betel boxes that were made from gold, enlayed with gems, and, reported the envoy, were "no inconsiderable load for a man"; the Big Black House left from the days of the British occupation, which was made of teak and haunted by those who were massacred during the era of the British pirate, Samuel White--all are vividly described in sensuous details that are accentuated by Barry Broman's lush photography.<br

Most revealing of Myanmar culture is the chapter on Vernacular Architecture, which is where Thanegi discusses the rich traditions and customs that have guided her country through the centuries. Examining both secular and sacred buildings, she explains the reasons why homes were simple and temples were opulent, why homes were traditionally planned around trees and why houses of all social classes were raised above the surface of the earth. The home plans that she describes are still followed by some of her countrymen today, and the open veranda, the front wall made of folding doors, the smooth-planked floors, and the toilet placed at some distance from the main dwelling place sound so perfectly suited to tropical living that it seems absurd that all homes in Southeast Asia don't conform to that ideal.

For those who are curious about Myanmar, or for those who plan to go to that country and see it for themselves, this book is the ideal introduction--its size is its only flaw, making it an impractical traveling companion. But it does fulfill its original function quite well--in addition to its unexpected literary and historical value, it looks dazzling on a coffee table.

The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh (Riverhead Books)

Although it's commonly accepted that truth is stranger than fiction, passionate readers quickly learn that fiction provides truths that cannot be found in volumes of fact and nowhere is this more obvious than in fiction about war. Military history is usually written with impeccable research and superb scholarship, but to learn what war truly is, it's necessary to turn to All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Landsman by Peter Charles Melman or A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Giles Courtemanche. These are all novels that convey what war is for the people within it, the visceral, stinking carnage and terror and waste of combatants and noncombatants alike.

Bookshelves bulge with military histories of the Vietnam War. They are books that contain numbers, statistics, reports, and background information, but they do not contain the war itself. For that, readers need to pick up Bao Ninh's slender and frequently overlooked novel, The Sorrow of War.

This is a book with emotional and literary weight that is belied by its slightly more than two hundred and fifty pages. Even the most voracious bibliovore will discover that reading it takes time. Entering a war is not easy and staying within it is at times unbearable, but while Bao Ninh quickly makes that apparent, his literary skill keeps his readers enmeshed in the horror that he depicts so well.

Kien is a survivor, one of the few soldiers from his battalion who has lived to see American troops leave his country in defeat. After fighting for the entire ten years that the United States brought its power to bear against Vietnam, he is ready to return to Hanoi and live the life he has dreamed of for the past decade. The girl he loves is waiting for him, he has a home to return to, the war has left him neither crippled nor mutilated. He, along with other returning soldiers, have "wildly passionate ideas of how they would launch into their new civilian peacetime lives."

But his girlfriend has changed in their ten years of separation, and Kien finds "there are no trumpets for the victorious soldiers, no drums, no music...The general population just didn't care about them." It's time to move on, the war is over-- but within Kien it is still terribly alive.

He is haunted by memories so vivid and so real that the only way to distance himself from them is to write them down, to pin them to a page and make them stories. They return to him in scenes of cinematic force, with no chronological order, and that is the way he tells about these experiences that come back to life and engulf him once more. He drinks, he writes, he remembers.

"Broken bodies, bodies blown apart, bodies vaporized," this has been Kien's landscape for ten years. He learns that disregarding death is the only way to survive war; now he has to learn to look, body by body, at the way he saw people die. And his readers look with him, in haunted jungles, in blood-soaked mud, in an encounter with a woman who must be killed, in the midst of bombing where " the air cracked like broken glass."

By the end of this book, the numbers cited by military histories have been given a dreadful resonance. During the ten years of Kien's war, five million Vietnamese soldiers were killed. Bao Ninh is one of ten survivors from a battalion of five hundred men.

In Laos and Siam by Marthe Bassene (White Lotus)

It's easy for us 21st century travelers to believe that the practice of adventure travel began with the creation of Lonely Planet, which encouraged anyone with a little extra cash to grab a backpack and a guidebook and set off on the road less traveled. Yet our modern adventures look rather pallid and tame when compared to the travels and travails of Marthe Bassene, a flower of the French colonial system in Vietnam, who went with her husband to visit Laos and Siam in 1909, a journey that at that time was a three-month excursion up the Mekong and into the jungle.

There were no roads, only the trails followed by trade caravans, and Mme. Bassene anticipates "difficulties...and some dangers." Crossing the rapids of the Mekong, with its whirlpools, submerged rocks, sandbars that could hold a vessel captive for months, and its gorges with "walls of rock eighty to a hundred meters high" was a daunting experience in a small steamboat, and one that passengers quickly learn to confront with sang-froid. ("Shut up," is the captain's response to Marthe Bassene's initial cry of fright.)

Her week-long trip from Laos into Siam is equally arduous, riding horseback along a mountainous, rocky trail through the jungle, soaked to the bone by rainstorms, and sapped by "the humid, tropical heat that knocks down all courage." Wearing her husband's clothes because her own are thoroughly saturated, riding barefoot because her shoes are dripping wet, Marthe dreams of sleeping on a bed with sheets, indoors, as she reposes on a camp bed near a bonfire that blazes all night to frighten away tigers.

Throughout her travels, Marthe's observations remain crisp and descriptive. The fragrance of Laos impresses her from her first day and follows her through the country, "a subtle and delicate perfume" that, she decides, "is simply the scent of Laos." Arriving in Vientiane, she finds traces of a ruined city that reminds her of Angkor Wat. Sacked by the Siamese in the previous century, the remains of the temples are shrouded by the roots of trees, covered by vines and brambles, and looted by Europeans as well as the Siamese conquerors. "The time is not far," Marthe observes, "when the Laotian gods will be everywhere, except in Laos."

In the kingdom of Luang-Prabang, she meets King Sisavong, a monarch with a French education and an "ironic smile", who tells her "that he often regrets having left Paris." His hospitality opens the city to Mme. Bassene, and allows her a comprehensive view of life in the palace and on the streets of Luang-Prabang. Visiting the markets, she reveals the beginning of globalization and its effects, as she discovers "poor-quality stuff...with English and German factory labels." Falling in love with the city, she decides it's "the refuge of the last dreamers."

When she arrives in Siam, Marthe finds herself a precursor of the bedraggled backpackers of the future, but as a Frenchwoman, she's well aware of the "distorted version of French elegance" that she presents. "My vagabond-like get-up," she remarks mournfully, "shamed me." As a Frenchwoman, she is also disconcerted by the independent, uncolonized Thai spirit; when forbidden to use a cabin on the upper deck of a boat because she is a woman, she threatens to complain to the governor of Phitsanuloke. "The governor governs the city, I govern my boat," she is decisively told by the Siamese captain, whom she characterizes as a "stubborn mule."

Given the imperial tenor of her time, and the length and difficulty of her journey, it's surprising that Marthe Bassene indulged in so little petulance and national chauvinism. It's equally surprising how easy travel has become in the past hundred years. In 2008, to replicate the trip that Marthe did in 1909 would be the height of masochism--if not completely impossible. But wouldn't it be fun--or at least interesting--to try?