Karthika Nair’s new book brings a new narrative to an old tale
Mircea Eliade's 1924 classic is now available in English translation, offering a rare glimpse into the often unseen Romania.
Even as Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka gets back to normalcy after a deadly siege a month ago, Bangladesh wrestles with the rising specter of extremism.
Negotiating our diversity in a world that so often defaults to skin color.
The future of Beijing? That depends on the many currents running through the political seas of the country, and the world around it. Will it be the capital of the last communist country on earth? Will it be the capital of the wealthiest capitalist economy? Will some semblance of its former beauty return?
It is already becoming clear that the efficacy of the old imperial strategy of “divide and rule”—caste against caste, religion against religion, temporary worker against permanent—is running out. The ability of India’s rural poor to endure cruelty is admittedly stupendous, but it is not, as their industrial overlords fondly believed, infinite.
A two-part inquiry on how ancient philosophy and medicine come up against pollution and modernization in China.
A two part series on how ancient philosophy and medicine come up against pollution and modernization in China
On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Junun, or, the Madness of Love.
The Chinese video game artist on emotion-centered play, collaboration beyond language, and the next generation of indie blockbusters.
The performance artists on the racial history of drag, jokes as a means of survival, and leaving room for paradox.
India's premier graphic novelist on street hustlers and the perils of cosmopolitanism.
Her feet were brown. She ambled closer. Darling, I’m you, she said. I’m you from the future.
When Hong Kong used to be home
The Philippine cinema pioneer on why films are “the greatest mirror of humanity’s struggle.”
Lessons of peace, unity, and selflessness collide with ethnic cleansing in Modi’s India.
A house is partitioned along the lines, and in the chaos, of the new independent nations of India and Pakistan.
The performance artist on going solo, inhabiting dangerous spaces, and the grotesqueness of time.
The artist on multi-channel video work, the communicative potential of sound, and contemporizing performance traditions.
Occupy Wall Street artist pens interactive online comic about Vietnamese refugees
Violence and citizenship in Assam, as experienced by its forgotten
Myanmar’s newest monks and the politics of almsgiving.
The appropriation of Michael Derrick Hudson as “Yi-Fen Chou”.
Can a distinction be drawn between developing nuclear power and nuclear weaponry?
The personal legacies of the many survivors of the atomic bombing of Japan.
Singapore may be one of the world’s leading financial centers, but is governing against ideology risky business for democracy?
On the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, the granddaughter of one of the scientists who made the bomb pays a visit to ground zero.
The author on fiction as activism, feminism in Indian epics, and cooking to conjure a sense of home.
Barbarians and apes—from the Opium Wars to the origin of the species.
Jacob Kiernan interviews the filmmaker on his upcoming project in Hong Kong, dislodged cultural identity, and the evolution of wedding photography in China.
Boundaries of Taste: Umami gives identity and intricacy to mother’s milk, a bowl of ramen, a writer poised between Japan and America.
Boundaries of Taste: Chased from his native India, Sanal Edamaruku contemplates the power of offense and accustoms himself to his new homeland.
Kashmir’s most infamous “fake encounter” leaves five families desperate for justice.
The Sri Lankan-American novelist on Sri Lanka’s brutal history and grappling with the right to tell the story of the country she left behind.
The activist on the ancient legacy and contemporary struggles of hijras.
The novelist on the vivid life of Margaret Mead, a love triangle in the South Pacific, and the shared language of anthropology and fiction.
Humanitarian efforts may alleviate the pain, but do they stop the political strife that leaves victims bleeding?
On violence against children after the Peshawar tragedy.
Ten years after the Indian Ocean tsunami, remembering normalcy and chaos in the province of Aceh.
At the top of the pantheon of spirits in Burma are the Thirty-Seven Nats. Twirling on earth, in a shimmering shawl, is their 74-year-old medium, U Nan Win.
Finally talking about June 1984---30 years later---will honor the dead and protect the living.
On Monday, Narendra Modi will be sworn in as India’s new Prime Minister. Is he a savior for India’s economy or a threat to the country’s secular democracy?
After a burst of Western interest in the mid-90s, and amid a complex system of government censorship, Vietnam’s contemporary art scene comes into its own.
Excerpts from Chinese dissident Hu Ping's seminal 1980 essay, translated for the first time into English.
Emily Parker talks with Yiyun Li about self-censorship in China, the line between fact and fiction, and whether it’s possible to create good art under a repressive regime.
The Danish filmmaker spent four years filming Chinese artist Ai Weiwei despite heavy surveillance, and the impact the film could have on the artist’s future.
Ela Bittencourt talks to the director of Losing Sonia, a profile of an Orthodox nun and icon painter who reflects the changes in modern Russia.
Evading Chinese censorship, the Gao Brothers challenge authority through sculpture, painting, performance, and photography.
The documentary filmmaker on reenacting atrocity as an allegory for impunity in his new film, The Act of Killing, which exposes the perpetrators of Indonesia’s mid-century genocide.
A new documentary on Indonesia’s 1965-66 anti-communist genocide is taking the international festival circuit by storm. But in the country that most needs to see it, the film is underground, its crew largely anonymous.
The Guggenheim's current exhibition, No Country, challenges conceptions of modern Asian art.
“Go home and pray to be forgiven,” she cried. “If you don’t pray now, you know what waits for you.”
Flash Fiction: Dossier No. X recovered from Interrogation Cell B of Sala-XX
A message written in blood that no one wants to hear.
China’s voracious appetite for resources isn’t something to be feared—it should be emulated.
Cambodia’s temples—Angkor Wat, Pre Rup, and Beng Maelea—invite reflections on land mines, Buddhism, and photography.
At the Joan B Mirviss Gallery’s The French Connection, Japanese women ceramists breathe new life and a welcome strangeness into a traditional artform.