{"title":"Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWeatherhead Books on Asia\u003c\/strong\u003e offers a multifaceted exploration of the continent through works that engage with philosophy, history, business, and culture. Readers can expect insightful perspectives on Asia’s dynamic economies, philosophical traditions, and evolving societies, blending scholarly depth with accessible storytelling.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom compelling travel narratives to thoughtful examinations of finance, technology, and health, this collection reflects the diversity and complexity of Asia today. Whether delving into entrepreneurial ventures or cultural heritage, these titles illuminate the region’s unique challenges and opportunities with clarity and nuance.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"a-catalog-of-such-stuff-as-dreams-are-made-on-by-kai-cheung-dung-9780231205436","title":"A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On\u003c\/em\u003e by Dung Kai-cheung is a playful and imaginative glimpse into the consumerist dreamscape of late-nineties Hong Kong. First published in 1999, it comprises ninety-nine sketches of life just after the handover of the former British colony to China. Each of these stories in miniature begins from a piece of ephemera, usually consumer products or pop culture phenomena, and develops alternately comic and poignant snapshots of urban life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDung's sketches centre on once-trendy items that evoke the world at the turn of the millennium, such as Hello Kitty, Final Fantasy VIII, a Windows 98 disk, a clamshell mobile phone, Air Jordans, and cargo shorts. The protagonist of each piece, typically a young woman, is struck by an odd, even overriding obsession with an object or fad. Characters embark on brief dalliances or relationships lasting no longer than the fashions that sparked them. Dung blends vivid everyday details—Portuguese egg tarts, Japanese TV shows, the Hong Kong subway—with situations that are often fantastical or preposterous.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis catalogue of vanished products illuminates how people use objects to define and even invent their own selves. A major work from one of Hong Kong's most gifted and original writers, Dung's archaeology of the end of the twentieth century speaks to perennial questions about consumerism, nostalgia, and identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853208867052,"sku":"9780231205436","price":52.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/8111063482270.jpg?v=1759191829"},{"product_id":"friend-by-nam-nyong-paek-9780231195607","title":"Friend","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFriend\u003c\/em\u003e by Paek Nam-nyong is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe novel delves into its protagonists' past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers alongside the story of the judge's own marital troubles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA best-seller in North Korea, where Paek continues to live and write, \u003cem\u003eFriend\u003c\/em\u003e illuminates a side of life in the DPRK that Western readers have never before encountered. Far from being a propagandistic screed in praise of the Great Leader, \u003cem\u003eFriend\u003c\/em\u003e describes the lives of people who struggle with everyday problems such as marital woes and workplace conflicts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eInstead of socialist-realist stock figures, Paek depicts complex characters who wrestle with universal questions of individual identity, the split between public and private selves, the unpredictability of existence, and the never-ending labour of maintaining a relationship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis groundbreaking translation of one of North Korea's most popular writers offers English-language readers a page-turner full of psychological tension as well as a revealing portrait of a society that is typically seen as closed to the outside world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853262934252,"sku":"9780231195607","price":114.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/8012773482270.jpg?v=1759193496"},{"product_id":"sachiko-by-shusaku-endo-9780231197311","title":"Sachiko","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn novels such as \u003cem\u003eSilence\u003c\/em\u003e, Endō Shūsaku examined the persecution of Japanese Christians in different historical eras. \u003cem\u003eSachiko\u003c\/em\u003e, set in Nagasaki during the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the 1930s, two young Japanese Christians, Sachiko and Shūhei, are free to play with American children in their neighbourhood. But life becomes increasingly difficult for them and other Christians after Japan launches wars of aggression. Meanwhile, a Polish Franciscan priest and former missionary in Nagasaki, Father Maximillian Kolbe, is arrested after returning to his homeland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEndō alternates scenes between Nagasaki—where the growing love between Sachiko and Shūhei is imperilled by mounting persecution—and Auschwitz, where the priest has been sent. Shūhei's dilemma deepens when he faces conscription into the Japanese military, conflicting with the Christian belief that killing is a sin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki looming in the distance, Endō depicts ordinary people trying to live lives of faith in a wartime situation that renders daily life increasingly unbearable. Endō's compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to find and share love for others, makes \u003cem\u003eSachiko\u003c\/em\u003e one of his most moving novels.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853294391532,"sku":"9780231197311","price":52.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/8029813482270.jpg?v=1759195533"},{"product_id":"soft-burial-by-fang-fang-9780231214995","title":"Soft Burial","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSoft Burial\u003c\/em\u003e by Fang Fang begins with a mysterious, nameless protagonist. Decades earlier, she was pulled out of a river in a state of near-death; upon regaining consciousness, she discovered that her entire memory had been erased.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe narrative follows her journey through recovery as she takes a job as a housekeeper in the home of a powerful cadre, marries the doctor who saved her, and starts a family of her own. As the story unfolds, the protective cocoon of amnesia that her subconscious wove around her begins to give way, revealing glimpses of her previous life and the unspeakable trauma that she suffered.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSoft Burial\u003c\/em\u003e is one of the most remarkable—and most controversial—recent works of Chinese literature. Part mystery, part historical fiction, and part social exposé, the novel intercuts different generations, regions, and time periods. First published in 2016, \u003cem\u003eSoft Burial\u003c\/em\u003e initially received critical acclaim but soon faced a wave of denunciations and was taken off the shelves of bookstores throughout China.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFang Fang challenged the unspoken rules that govern how Chinese writers portray the past by depicting the human costs of the Land Reform Campaign in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and she was attacked for expressing sympathy toward members of the \"landlord class.\" An intimate portrait of historical trauma and the psychological toll of repressed violence, \u003cem\u003eSoft Burial\u003c\/em\u003e is a landmark in contemporary Chinese fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853300125932,"sku":"9780231214995","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/8206653482270.jpg?v=1759195859"},{"product_id":"table-for-one-by-ko-eun-yun-9780231192033","title":"Table for One","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn office worker who has no one to eat lunch with enrols in a course that builds confidence about eating alone. A man with a pathological fear of bedbugs offers up his body to save his building from infestation. A time capsule in Seoul is dug up hundreds of years before it was intended to be unearthed. A vending machine repairman finds himself trapped in a shrinking motel during a never-ending snowstorm.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn these and other indelible short stories, contemporary South Korean author Yun Ko-eun conjures up slightly off-kilter worlds tucked away in the corners of everyday life. Her fiction is bursting with images that toe the line between realism and the fantastic. Throughout \u003cem\u003eTable for One\u003c\/em\u003e, comedy and an element of the surreal are interwoven with the hopelessness and loneliness that pervades the protagonists' decidedly mundane lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYun's stories focus on solitary city dwellers, and her eccentric, often dreamlike humour highlights their sense of isolation. Mixing quirky and melancholy commentary on densely packed urban life, she calls attention to the toll of rapid industrialisation and the displacement of traditional culture. Acquainting the English-speaking audience with one of South Korea's breakout young writers, \u003cem\u003eTable for One\u003c\/em\u003e presents a parade of misfortunes that speak to all readers in their unconventional universality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853306319084,"sku":"9780231192033","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7977033482270.jpg?v=1759196173"},{"product_id":"who-ate-up-all-the-shinga-by-wan-suh-park-9780231148993","title":"Who Ate Up All the Shinga?","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePark Wan-suh is a best-selling and award-winning writer whose work has been widely translated and published throughout the world. \u003cem\u003eWho Ate Up All the Shinga?\u003c\/em\u003e is an extraordinary account of her experiences growing up during the Japanese occupation of Korea and the Korean War, a time of great oppression, deprivation, and social and political instability.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePark Wan-suh was born in 1931 in a small village near Kaesong, a protected hamlet of no more than twenty families. Park was raised believing that \"no matter how many hills and brooks you crossed, the whole world was Korea and everyone in it was Korean.\" But then, the tendrils of the Japanese occupation, which had already worked their way through much of Korean society before her birth, began to encroach on Park's idyll, complicating her day-to-day life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith acerbic wit and brilliant insight, Park describes the characters and events that came to shape her young life, portraying the pervasive ways in which collaboration, assimilation, and resistance intertwined within the Korean social fabric before the outbreak of war. Most absorbing is Park's portrait of her mother, a sharp and resourceful widow who both resisted and conformed to stricture, becoming an enigmatic role model for her struggling daughter. Balancing period detail with universal themes, Park weaves a captivating tale that charms, moves, and wholly engrosses.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46853361598700,"sku":"9780231148993","price":81.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7546633482270.jpg?v=1759198787"},{"product_id":"azaleas-by-kim-sowol-9780231139731","title":"Azaleas","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAvailable for the first time in English, \u003cem\u003eAzaleas\u003c\/em\u003e is a captivating collection of poems by a master of the early Korean modernist style. Published in 1925, \u003cem\u003eAzaleas\u003c\/em\u003e is the only collection Kim Sowol (1902-1934) produced during his brief life, yet he remains one of Korea's most beloved and well-known poets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHis work is a delightful and sophisticated blend of the images, tonalities, and rhythms of traditional Korean folk songs with surprisingly modern forms and themes. Sowol is also known for his unique and sometimes unsettling perspective, expressed through loneliness, longing, and a creative use of dream imagery—a reflection of Sowol's engagement with French Symbolist poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAzaleas\u003c\/em\u003e recounts the journey of a young Korean as he travels from the northern P'yongyang area to the cosmopolitan capital of Seoul. Told through an array of voices, the poems describe the young man's actions as he leaves home, his experiences as a student and writer in Seoul, and his return north. Although considered a landmark of Korean literature, \u003cem\u003eAzaleas\u003c\/em\u003e speaks to readers from all cultures.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAn essay by Sowol's mentor, the poet Kim Ok, concludes the collection and provides vital insight into Sowol's work and life. This elegant translation by David R. McCann, an expert on modern Korean poetry, maintains the immediacy and richness of Sowol's work and shares with English-language readers the quiet beauty of a poet who continues to cast a powerful spell on generations of Korean readers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46986637738220,"sku":"9780231139731","price":51.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7454013482270.jpg?v=1763001194"},{"product_id":"the-narrow-cage-and-other-modern-fairy-tales-by-vasily-eroshenko-9780231207690","title":"The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century: a blind multilingual Esperanto speaker from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in Japan and befriended the famous modernist writer Lu Xun in China. Born in a small Ukrainian village in imperial Russia, he was blinded at a young age by complications from measles. Seeking to escape the limitations imposed on the blind, Eroshenko became a globe-trotting storyteller. He was well known in Japan and China as a social activist and a popular writer of political fairy tales that drew comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales\u003c\/em\u003e presents a selection of Eroshenko's stories, translated from Japanese and Esperanto, to English readers for the first time. These fables tell the stories of a religiously disillusioned fish, a jealous paper lantern, a scholarly young mouse, a captive tiger who seeks to liberate his fellow animals, and many more. They are at once inventive and politically charged experiments with the fairy tale genre and charming, lyrical stories that will captivate readers as much today as they did during Eroshenko's lifetime. In addition to eighteen fairy tales, the book includes semiautobiographical writings and prose poems that vividly evoke Eroshenko's life and world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47384044634348,"sku":"9780231207690","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/8133603482270.jpg?v=1773398911"},{"product_id":"the-running-flame-by-fang-fang-9780231215015","title":"The Running Flame","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"She knew that if she didn't say her piece, that flame would never be extinguished; even after death, it would continue raging.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Running Flame\u003c\/em\u003e opens with its protagonist in prison awaiting execution, desperate to give an account of her life. Yingzhi, a girl from the countryside, sees opportunity in the liberal trends sweeping across China. After high school, she joins a song-and-dance troupe, which allows her to travel and opens her eyes to new people and places. However, an unplanned pregnancy brings an abrupt end to all her youthful dreams. Trapped in a bad marriage, Yingzhi is driven to desperate measures—and eventually a shocking act of violence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFang Fang's explosive short novel inspired widespread social debate in China upon its publication in 2001. In exploring the difficulties of one woman shackled by patriarchal tradition against the backdrop of radical social change, \u003cem\u003eThe Running Flame\u003c\/em\u003e bears witness to widespread experiences of gendered violence and inequality. Fang Fang evocatively captures both the heady feeling of possibility in China's roaring 1990s and its dark underside, as economic reform unleashed social dislocation in towns and villages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe novel draws loosely from interviews the author conducted with female death row inmates in a Chinese prison. Equal parts social critique and domestic horror, \u003cem\u003eThe Running Flame\u003c\/em\u003e is a gripping, propulsive narrative that shines a light on the struggles of poor women in China's countryside.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471827058924,"sku":"9780231215015","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/721a114e45be90883dbb93cbf66d0907.jpg?v=1775694244"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/series-weatherhead-books-on-asia.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}