Islam, Capitalism, and Literature

NEARLY SEVENTEEN YEARS after the fall of Suharto’s totalitarian New Order regime, Indonesia is a different nation, and many...

The Ghost in the Garden

FOR GENERATIONS, THE Ghost languished in the garden of my nenek’s house. If you’ve ever been to Sungai Rokam,...

The New Woman in the Old Flat

THE PARSIS OWNED a lot of Karachi at Partition. They still owned a little of it.‘You can’t have the...

Vacuum

In 2013, there were 319,325 migrant workers in Hong Kong. About half were Indonesian and nearly all were women....

Connected and Disconnected

WHEN GARETH EVANS visited Saigon on his way to London in 1968, it wasn’t exactly a common travel route,...

Those you cannot see

ON A RAINLESS monsoon Sunday, she walks to the electric train station closest to her house. She turns back...

Into the air, into the sky, into the clouds

OUR VAN FLOATED on the river of mid-morning Kandy traffic. As though we had dropped anchor, we drifted forward...

What happened to ‘old Asia’?

ON THE MONGOLIAN steppe roams a dog with the unfortunate name of ‘Rabies’. Some years ago, while I was...

Metaphors

They don’t explain. They don’t connect. They don’t mean what they say. They don’t say what they mean. They...

Uniquely unique, with reason

WITH CHINA’S RISE, understanding what the country’s political elite thinks is no longer a matter that concerns just China...

Tinderbox

BACK WHEN THEY’VE not yet met, Ameer wears a pressed shirt in his profile picture, Ada a cellophane stare....

Papercuts and bloodlines