No Asian culture is more steeped in the rituals and power of magic as Indonesia. In his debut novel, Indonesian-born author Erick Setiawan presents a bewitching but modern fantasy world in which two feuding families live in horribly haunted houses full of spirits and spells. Yet their lives are ruled by universal values — love, desire, loss and pain — firmly rooted in human emotions.
Scoops
Bound-Foot in China
In a remote village in southwestern China live 300 women whose feet were crushed long ago to the size of a child’s. They are the last survivors haunted by a mutilating tradition that lasted a millennium — solely for men’s pleasure.
Oh, Calcutta!
Call it by its well-known colonial name or the postcolonial P.C. “Kolkata,” the place that Mother Teresa did most to popularize is a City of Joy and cultural powerhouse like no other. AsiaScoop Contributing Photographer Dev Nayak offers an eclectic glimpse of India’s most marvelous metropolis.
Belief Above All
Long before Europe’s enlightenment and centuries before Gautama Buddha renounced his princely life and set out to solve the riddle of human suffering, a band of ascetics in India offered hope and redemption to the masses.
Shanghai Malls
Forget Beijing and the 2008 Olympics. As Shanghai goes, so goes the rest of China. After she graduated from Stanford University this past spring, Katie Salisbury spent nine weeks in China’s most industrial and cosmopolitan city, studying its shopping malls and the people who inhabit them. For Salisbury, it was a fascinating, if somewhat pricey, experience.
