Switching things up from digital to analogue (well, unless you have an ebook reader), here, our latest column titled The Regular Read which can range from space flight to slashers. Here, educator, IT professional, photographer and writer Peter Morgan shares his list.
Or as he mentions himself, “This is an eclectic list as I’m interested in reading across countries and genres to gain new and different perspectives”.
Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia’s Haunted Hinterland, Jacek Hugo-Bader
Polish journalist Jacek Hugo-Bader travelled 2000 km by motorbike in far-eastern Russia. The diaries are remarkable stories, fuelled by vodka, of veterans, reclusive scholars, miners, convicts and fallen heroes. A complex picture of history’s impact on the individual and perhaps an insight into contemporary world affairs.
State of Emergency, Jeremy Tiang
Award-winning Singaporean Jeremy Tiang’s deft tale of the Malay Emergency is factually illuminating a complex and difficult time in Malaysian and Singaporean history, while also being a compelling story about love, family, separation and secretive and dangerous politics. I learned a lot about Southeast Asia’s history and how it still reverberates today.
Night Prayers, Santiago Gamboa
Columbian diplomat Santiago Gamboa has written urgent literary crime fiction. His brother and sister characters move between his home country and Asia, including Thailand and India. Their tales are told with the obvious knowledge of someone who has visited countrymen in dank prisons and drank champagne at embassy receptions. Well-written, with a fast pace and moving unpredictable turns.
The Best of the Mekong Review, Minh Bui Jones
The Mekong Review is a rare Southeast Asian journal of literature and current affairs. A sampling of the best articles includes, for example, a Vietnamese woman’s revisiting of Graham Green’s The Quiet American and a profile of Chef Anthony Bourdain’s two visits to Cambodia — the second when he displays an awareness of how little he understood of the country on his first visit, and much more. Because these are magazine articles, each is only a few pages and can be read independently, although the thoughtfully edited prose and insights stay much longer.
The Long Take, Robin Robertson
Don’t be put off by Scottish poet Robin Robertson’s Booker Prize-shortlisted noir novel being written in verse. The Long Take follows a Canadian WWII vet as he seeks freedom and survival from New York to LA. The easily read verse creates a film-like atmosphere and evokes the 1950s everywhere — good people, troubled by the violence they’ve seen and their own pasts, trying to make their way in the world.
Stories of the Sahara, Sanmao, The Oblivion Seekers, Isabelle Eberhardt
20th-century Taiwanese writer Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara pairs well with 19th-century Isabelle Eberhardt’s slim The Oblivion Seekers. Both travelled extensively in North Africa and wrote about their unconventional lives and explorations in succinct and illuminating prose.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif, The Wandering Falcon, Jamil Ahmed
In a similar vein, a suitable pairing might include British Pakistani writer and journalist Mohammed Hanif with a civil servant and novelist Jamil Ahmad. A Case of Exploding Mangoes tries to explain the still unsolved mystery of the surreal truth-is-much-stranger-than-fiction mid-air explosion that killed the Pakistani President and the American Ambassador on a plane loaded with crates of mangoes.
On the ground, in the frontier, Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon is a series of linked stories about tribal areas of Pakistan, and, while not flinching from the rural backwardness, the stories also honour the complex political and ethnic dimensions of Pakistan.
Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon, How to Become a Successful Artist, Magnus Resch
Finally, for anyone with creative ambitions, two contrasting non-fiction works are Austin Kleon’s heartfelt and encouraging, almost cartoonish Steal Like an Artist and Magnus Resch’s advice-filled neo-Machiavelli approach to the art market How to Become a Successful Artist. One will feel equal parts motivated about making art for one’s own sake, while also being both challenged and motivated to use logic and information to pursue one’s interests.
Peter Morgan’s work is featured in SAMPAN, the first anthology of writing published by LASALLE’s MA Creative Writing programme.
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