These are some of the books I found most memorable this year.
Outsider II: Always Almost, Never Quite (reviewed Jan. 9) by Brian Sewell [Quartet Books]. This is the concluding volume of the autobiography of the gay London-based art critic as well-known for his trenchantly traditionalist views on art as for his ability to name names and scandalize generally. A magnificent read, and my Number One choice for 2014.
The Establishment: And how they get away with it (reviewed Oct. 16) by Owen Jones [Allen Lane]. Here a young UK journalist with strong left-wing sympathies analyzes how the rich, despite living in a democracy, continue to influence government for their own ends. Jones’s central point is that the right wing persuades the populace to put the blame on immigrants and the unemployed, instead of on the real culprits — bankers, high-end tax dodgers, and the wealthy in general. With his northern accent and youthful face, Jones is becoming well-known on TV in the UK, and he’s the just sort of polemicist the Labor Party, soon to face a crucial election, needs. This is his credo
The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (reviewed Aug. 21) by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert [Belknap, Harvard University Press]. Not an easy read, but the descriptions of encountering dancing spirits and opposing foreigners intent on a land-grab makes it worth the effort. Claude Levi-Strauss helped Albert, a French anthropologist, in the book’s early stages.
Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China (reviewed April 3), edited by Tom Carter [Earnshaw Books]. Here are 28 highly enjoyable tales of extraordinary variety — traveling by train from Urumqi to Hong Kong without a ticket, exploring the ancient Tea Horse Road from Lhasa to Yunnan, deciding whether to pen stories for students that will be presented as their own work in university applications, and visiting some not very prepossessing prostitutes along with even less prepossessing foreign colleagues. Unremittingly entertaining.
Nazi Goreng (reviewed March 6) by Marco Ferrarese [Monsoon Books]. This is an eminently readable and intelligent novel set in Penang, written by an Italian-born author resident in Asia. Ferrarese is also a punk-rock guitarist, and he met many of the “Malay supremacist” youths he describes at his gigs. They mouth anti-immigrant sentiments without having any knowledge of the people they so casually vilify, but they’re central to the plot which, though extensively concerned with drug dealing, also includes police corruption. I found the whole book astute and very insightful.
An Officer and a Spy (reviewed Dec. 11) by Robert Harris [Arrow Books]. This powerful novel is about the Dreyfus Case in 19th century France in which a Jewish army officer was wrongly convicted of passing state secrets to Germany. The campaign for his release quickly divided the country, and Harris presents a detailed picture of the characters within the state apparatus who worked against Dreyfus’s re-trial. This is a novel that looks like a blockbuster but is actually the work of an intelligent and gifted writer. I’m currently eagerly seeking out his other books.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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