1984 by George Orwell

War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength.

So chant the party’s slogan.

The year is 1984, Winston Smith lives in London which is part of the country called Oceania. The world is divided into three countries that encompass the entire globe: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The leader of Oceania, is the omnipresent Big Brother. Oceania was a totalitarian society, which censors everyone’s behaviour, even their thoughts. The structure of the society is organised in 3 tiers. There is the Inner Party,  Outer Party, and The Proles. 

In the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), protagonist Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party’s propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and always correct, yet his meagre existence disillusions him into rebellion against Big Brother and secretly longs to join the fabled Brotherhood, a supposed group of underground rebels headed by O’Brien that aims to overturn the government. Winston kept a secret journal. He writes his thoughts against the party into this journal. He had committed a “Thought Crime” and knew sooner or later they are coming to get him. His thought had turned into words, and his words became actions. This is why thought crime is considered a sin in the eyes’ of the party members. 

Winston tries to get in-touch with the past buy purchasing antique items at Mr. Carrington’s run-down shops, which have become rare and, for the most part, illegal. There are remnants of Oldspeak in Winston’s writings although Winston is in charge in creating the structure and abbreviation of the NewSpeak Language. 

For example the Newspeak would say:

Times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusun-

Good refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

In the Oldspeak (Old standard English) it means:

The reporting of Big Brother’s order for the Day in the Times of December 3^rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to non-existent persons. Re-write it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing.

Winston meets Julia and they secretly fall in love and have an affair, something which is considered a crime as the ultimate goal for marriage in the eyes of the party is to breed. Winston who is against the orthodoxy of the political party, and Julia “who present n appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy means”. One day, while walking home, Winston encounters O’Brian, an inner party member, who gives Winston his address. Winston had exchanged glances with O’Brian before and had dreams about him giving him the impression that O’Brian was a member of the “Brotherhood” an organisation which plot to overthrow the Big Brother regime. Since Julia hated the party as much as Winston did, they decided to join the underground movement. 

Winston and Julia are sent to the Ministry of Love which is a rehabilitation centre for criminals accused of thought crime. There, Winston was separated from Julia, and tortured until his beliefs coincided with those of the Party. Winston denounces everything he believes him. Faced with his greatest fear, he denounces his love for Julia. The agreement between Winston and Julia about “All you care about is yourself” led me to the pit of disappointment in humanity. Perhaps self preservation is an inherent instinct and above all else that matters, even above love……

Winston was released back into the public, no longer the same person, he wastes his days at the Chestnut Tree drinking gin, void of human emotions, professing an undying love to the Big Brother. 

This book is a definitive, prophetic, tragic and terrifying account of one man’s futile attempt to break from The Party and lead a normal life. Orwell’s plausible dystopia is the cautionary North Star by which we seem to chart our course as a society – are we there yet? Are we there now? Are we getting warmer? It’s a parable of the most powerful sort because it’s at once so specific to the novel and yet so general you can see signs of it in our contemporary society. The fact that this book is written in 1949 (not 1984, when communism was at its height) made me all the more impressed with how prophetic Orwell has been. So many things about post-9/11 society could be termed “Orwellian” if we had mind to, all our emails and Internet exchanged are monitored by some unseen Big Brother, the threat of nuclear warfare between countries, the threat of “imaginary” enemies which the politicians purports to be a bigger threat than it suppose to be, so that the constant state of at war is really an attempt to keep the society intact, hence “war is peace” …… 

War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past the ruling groups of all countries did fight against each other, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’ has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. 

…..The similarities keep mounting. But this is just the newest set of astonishing parallels… I don’t think we have ever been entirely out from under the thumb of Big Brother since Orwell invented him. 

It is said as literary science fiction, 1984 is a classic novel of the social science fiction sub-genre, thus, since its publication in 1949, the terms and concepts of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, et cetera, became contemporary vernacular, including the adjective Orwellian, denoting George Orwell’s writings and totalitarianism as exposited in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm (1945). For example, several terms are used that have been integrated into today’s world. The most well-known term is Double-Think. Double-Think is being aware of two ideas that contradict each-other, and believing in both of them.

Having shunned all things political for the better half of my life, I took for granted of these English words and expressions (i.e. Big Brother, totalitarian and thought crime) and perceive them as contemporary lingo of the 21st century. Now that I know it was introduced by Orwell 60 years ago just made me gawp at awe at the work of this amazing author. Truly brilliant. Political satire at its best.

What Orwell does well in the midst of writing a tough political novel as such, he injected warmth and tenderness in Winston’s yearning for life’s basic luxury, i.e. a journal, a crystal, a cup of freshly brewed coffee, a forgotten childhood song etc. The impending doom and forbidden love between Winston and Julia, stolen moments of nestling up against each other in their love nest, a moment of just being a normal human being, made me all the more sadden when they are arrested and tortured. (For guys out there, if you think picking up girl is tough, compare to Winston experience, you’ll be thankful that it is not as bad it seems!) 

My rating: 5/5

1984 will disturb and provoke your thought for a long time. The influence of this book is so omnipotent that it’s a must-read for any literate person. I love Animal Farm, but 1984 is something else. It’s Animal Farm 10 times over. Along with “The blinding absence of the light”, this is the most thought provoking book I have read for this year. 

More about 1984:

In the novel 1985 (1978), Anthony Burgess proposes that Orwell, disillusioned by the Cold War’s onset, intended to title the book 1948. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, reports that Orwell originally set 1980 as the story’s time, but the extended writing led to re-titling the novel, first, to 1982, then to 1984, an inversion of the 1948 composition year. Like most dystopias, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been, throughout its history, either banned or legally challenged as intellectually dangerous to the public. In 2005, Time magazine included it to its list of one hundred best English-language novels since 1923. 

This is the new cover of the 60^th anniversary edition. For a study of the novel1984, click here.

Heretical book cover

While we are at the topic of heresy. This following book cover pasted on my right seems heretic and it just occured to me that anyone who see it might look at it and get disgusted.

I would organise a giveaway if anyone could tell me what book title this cover belongs to.

But for now, I’m more worried about rendering my blog a wrong and bad impression than organising a quickie giveaways… So give it a go, and tell me if you know the title of this book!

No hint. But there is a quick way to find out.

The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent

Salem, Massachusetts, 19^th August 1692. Martha Carrier was accused, tried and hanged as a witch. 

The Carrier family, Thomas and Martha, with their children Richard, Andrew, Sarah, Tom and little Hannah move to the village of Salem to stay with their maternal Grandmother. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier, is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating witch hysteria of trials, imprisonment and execution of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. 

This story is told by her daughter Sarah who survived the ordeal. This is one of those books where the ending is known, and the survivors are identified. Yet I read it because the subject matter, “witches”, is enticing. I read the book with accompanied reading guide.  

When Sarah and Hannah were sent off to their Uncle Roger and Aunt Mary Toothtaker to avoid the small pox epidemic, Sarah preferred her cousin’s Margaret’s family to hers. Finding a confidante out of Margaret, Sarah found human bonding never before experienced in her home. However, as Sarah’s mother, Martha reminded, using the polished beautiful poisonous mushroom as parable, all things are not what it seems on the surface, especially in the Toothtaker’s household. 

The breakthrough of the mother-daughter relationship happened when they share a secret. Secret of the red book of their family history…  

Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quiet defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breasts until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. Some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling. 

I was asked by the reading guide what was it about Martha’s character that antagonise the neighbours? Martha is a hard, uncompromising woman who speaks her mind and who stands up for her rights. But the compelling reason that Martha was eventually brought to trial was because she was related to the Toothtaker and that she was not well liked by her neighbours. The witch hysteria in part is propelled by extreme ignorance and fear, the church’s fervent wish to purge the devil totally and that the accusations of vindictive young girls, who appeared to be innocent, and Martha’s enemies, were taken as the undisputable truth. The community of Salam, the magistrates so easily believe in and rely on “spectral evidence” perhaps stemmed from the fact that the sins of witch craft and wizardry are of spiritual nature, hence only flimsy verbal evidence can be relied upon. 

If the needle is sharp, it can pierce the coarsest cloth. Ply the needle in and out of a canvas and with a great length of thread one can make a sail to move a ship across the ocean. In such a way can a sharp gossipy tongue, with the thinnest thread of rumour, stitch together a story to flap in the breeze. Hoist that story upon the pillar of superstitious belief and a whole town can be pulled along with the wind of fear.

Martha refusal to confess leads to her demise (I didn’t know a confession of being a witch would spare one from being hanged!), as she believes that “Nothing of greater good comes without struggle and sacrifice in equal measure, be you man or woman, and in this way we freed from Tyranny”. Her husband, Thomas Carrier, despite his size and influence in the society seek not to persuade and deter Martha, knowing that Martha will not be swayed once she decided upon her mind. When Martha is accused of witchcraft, she makes Sarah promise not to stand up for her in court. As Sarah and her brothers are hauled into the prison themselves, the vicious cruelty of the trials becomes apparent. The Carrier family, along with other innocents, are starved, deprived and manacled in prison, battling their way through the hysteria with sheer willpower their mother has taught them.

“How has reading the book changed your opinions about the men and women hanged as witches?” is I thought a silly question. Reading the book had not changed my opinions about men and women hanged as witches, because I believed the innocence were wrongly accused and I abhorred bigotry. A notable hero of my childhood, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. I did not believe all men and women who are hanged as witches are in fact witches to begin with.

“Are there modern day “Witches”? Well, I would say the practice of witch doctor and black magic still exists in this modern day.

Can we, or should we, redefine the meaning of the word “witch”?

Perhaps. We need to redefine the word “witch”, as it is said in the Cambridge dictionary: a woman who is believed to have magical powers and who uses them to harm or help other people. Whilst in Puritan New England, all witches are condemned to death, in the modern days, we accept that there are good witches. An evil witch and malevolent wizard deserve to be punished and burn in hell, but a good witch is an interesting subject matter that could be made into box-office movie! (That is a discussion topic for another day!)  

 

 Rating: 3.5/5

 

The ironic is that while a mother was condemned by the truth, the daughter is saved by a lie. Sarah and Tom denounced their own mother and saved themselves from death. This book is a semi-family biography. Kent research is evidenced in quoting the text of the arrest warrant and naming the full names of the accused in death row in the book.  Read about Puritan New England and be transported into the world of hard labour, plague, bigotry and attack of the Red Indians in the village of Salem. The underlying theme about this book is about family, courage and love. In Puritan New England, love is expressed in a subtle way, through deeds and actions, thus is the appeal of the story.  

About the Writer:

Kathleen Kent is a tenth generation direct descendent of Martha Carrier, and The Heretic’s Daughter is based on true family history. Kathleen has worked in commodity trading and for the US Department of Defense in Russia. She now lives in Dallas with her husband and son. The Herectics Daughter is her first novel. Don’t mind the error in the flap of Pan Macmillan books 2009 edition that says Sarah’s father / Martha’s husband is English. He is in fact, Welsh.

Misadventures in the Middle East by Henry Hemming

Born in 1979, Henry Hemming went to school in London, followed by university in Newcastle. Two months after graduating with a 1st in History he began a year-long journey through the Middle East in a second-hand Toyota pick-up truck called Yasmine, together with another artist friend, Al Braithwaite. Using Yasmine as an eye-catching distracter is a used trick, (see my blog entry on the Adventure Capitalist). Yasmine drew much curiosity and diffuse potential animosity the locals may have. The boys had to roughen up Yasmine’s body to give it a weathered look and paint a Mashallah  across its body to bless its journey because Yasmine look too new not to be a coveted item.

At school Henry and Al had talked – albeit in the slightly dreamy unrealistic sense of the word – about the idea of travelling the world as artist-explorers (with patchy beards (see below). Both believed in the value of making work in situ and allowing their setting to interfere as much as possible with their artistic process. The journey through the Middle East that followed was, more or less, the first time they’d put this idea to the test.

The idea was in part foolhardy and in part eye-opening. The boys are turned back by the Slovaks border guard as suspected Islamist. Henry witnessed the practice of swirling dervishes, hung out with the pious and the American worshippers in Iran, mingled among Jordanian family and incensed crowds who are angry with the attack on Iraq. Using art as his passport, travels from the drug-fuelled ski slopes of Iran via the region’s mosques, palaces, army barracks, secret beaches, police cells, nightclubs, torture chambers, brothels and artists’ studios all the way to Baghdad. Visiting Baghdad in its highest alert, missing a curfew and risked being killed by cross-fires and 4^th of July party with the GIs in Saddam’s Presidential Palace etc. Memorable.

Henry presents a crystal irony of the belief of GIs fighting for freedom and liberty, and the outrage of the Arabs. He lifted the veil of stigma and stereotypes about Middle East and revealed that at heart the Middle Eastern pursued the same yearnings as everyone else on earth, the right to speak their minds, to practice their religions and to express themselves in beauty and art.

For me, Al and Esam, the experience of thinking of ourselves as artists had, among other things, conditioned us with a sense of artist-ness that owed a lot to the universal caricature of the artist as the expressive, liberal, belligerent, sex-crazed and emotionally tortured loner who smokes a lot and whose if you opened it up would be a crazy, flighty, Joycian stream of consciousness. “Oh, you’re an artist. Right. Well, that explains the beard.” Or, “You’re not that weird for an artist.”

Like a Palestinian being told over and over that the only language he fully understood was that of violence, or a Muslim being told that the “Islamic world” was under attack because of its Islamicness, it is hard not to believe in a myth if it is projected on you consistently from a position of authority. Even more so when there are images that appear to confirm the myth. Once enough people believe in the myth it becomes self-perpetuating and before long, as somebody who makes art for a living you feel compelled to act a bit tortured or have moments of weirdness so that you feel, in a passive and societal sense, more like an artist. Ditto as a Palestinian.

Henry found a common ground with the locals through his art. One notable scene is where Al and Henry sat painting an Iraqi artist and the Iraqi artist painted them in turn. All sat painting one another, in them, Henry and Al found “themselves”. Everywhere we went in the Middle East we had been drawn to places and people in whom we saw ourselves.

It is refreshing to read travel writing through an artist eyes. More so when this artist, Hemming, came to the Middle East armed with a thorough knowledge of the culture and the religion of Islam.  

The main problem was the term “Islamic world”. With some 15 mil European Muslims living north of Granada and West of Istanbul, it felt anachronistic or just wrong to talk about the Islamic world as a geographical unit. It was much better and more accurate to talk about a body of believers, the ummah. That way you would not imply that any Muslim living outside a predominantly Muslim country was in some way an exile or part of a diaspora community.

The other problem with the label “Islamic World” was neither the people we were meeting nor the places we were seeing were “Islamic”. “Islamic “means of Islam; that is, of the Qur’an or the hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, it implies something immutable. While most of the Muslims we had met were trying to follow Islam, they were not Islam itself. As one man pout it to me, “You must think of Islam itself as a beautiful bright light and we the Muslims are the moths that are all drawn to it”. The faith of no two Muslims was the same. But, put simply, the fact hat someone described themselves as a Muslim did not imbue them with any given characteristics. This felt important. So instead of talking about the “Islamic world”, were we making a “portrait of the centre of the Muslim world”? or perhaps it was better to talk about the plain old “Middle East? Better still, the “post-9/11 Middle East”?

Rating: 4/5

A week ago, Elena and Bernadette were talking about how Tom Rob Smith look too young and attractive to be a writer. I had a good laugh when I googled and found out that Henry Hemming is even younger, and found this photo of a better-looking Henry (compared to the bearded one). Starry-eyed Hemming took the death-defying trip to Baghdad when he is 22 turned 23, and published this book at the age of 26. I think Hemming narrates his experience with depths and insights beyond his age, understanding the region and religion better than most. It is thought provoking, funny, surprising. It is overall an enjoyable read. 

“O Mankind! We have created you from a Male and Female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another ….” – The Quran, 49:13

About the Author, artist and adventurer:
Born in 1979, Henry Hemming went to school in and around London, followed by university in Newcastle. Two months after graduating with a 1st in History he began a year-long journey through the Middle East in a second-hand Toyota pick-up truck called Yasmine with another artist, Al Braithwaite.

At school Henry and Al had talked – albeit in the slightly dreamy unrealistic sense of the word – about the idea of travelling the world as artist-explorers (with patchy beards (see right). Both believed in the value of making work in situ and allowing their setting to interfere as much as possible with their artistic process. The journey through the Middle East that followed was, more or less, the first time they’d put this idea to the test.

In August 2003, a year after they set out, they returned to London having nearly being killed in Baghdad (Al more than Henry), with a large body of work in the back of their truck as well as three successful exhibitions completed. These took place in Tehran, Muscat and Amman. They sent a proposal for a slightly off-kilter visual account of this journey to Booth-Clibborn Editions and a year later Off Screen was published. A series of international exhibitions coincided with its release.

First Anniversary and Reviewing Thoughts

Today is my blog’s 1^st anniversary. (Wow is it one year already?!!) Bernardette’s entry article on reviewing., got me thinking about reviewing myself. When I first read her post I it would be a interesting to reflect on what I have done so far, after a year of book reviewing:

Do you find that the anticipation of reviewing the book has changed your reading experience?

Not very much. I still aim to have a good mix between fiction and non-fiction read, knowing that non-fiction won’t be a crowd pleaser. I picked up books from shops and library as I want to read them.  I use a big post-it as my bookmark and jot down notes on memorable quotes or beautiful prose, as I always do well before I start blogging about books.

Like Bernadette, reviewing has changed my after-read experience. Since I started this blog I have reviewed every book I’ve read, even the ones I had abandoned. I spend as long as it takes to encapsulate my thoughts and feelings about the book, and try to capture the essence of the book by quoting my favourite paragraphs, and hopefully write a brilliant review (not always possible!). I now retained a lot more of what I read and that is the biggest benefit derived from this exercise.

Are you rating the book even as you read? Or do you wait until the end to sum it all up?

Towards the middle of the book I already have a tentative rating in my head. I like to be proven wrong if the story picks up and became more interesting, Say if I start with a 4 it possibly escalates into a 4.5 or a 5. If I start with a 2 or a 3, chances are I’ll abandon the book mid-way. The ending of a book is not a show stopper for me, If I have enjoyed the ride, and have a big crash on a dismal book ending, chances are I will still give the book a good rating, if I have a good experience insofar.

Does knowing you’ll be reviewing it (or rating it) publicly affect which books you pick up in the first place?

No. I read what I want to read, including perceived boring non-fiction books. I even have a problem joining a book club because I like the liberty to read what I want to read, anytime, anywhere. However, I fall prey in all things new. So whenever there is a new anticipated book out in the market and everybody’s reading it, or a book that I know my blogger friends are reading, I tend to read that first so that I’m able to share similar experience with everybody.

Does the process of writing the review itself change how you felt about the book?

The process of reviewing is a reflection of self and the world around me. There are books with topics that are close to heart which incite many private emotions, some which are too private or embarrassed to be shared in a public space. Reviewing books helps me understand my thoughts about certain incidents in my life, helps me keep the lessons learnt alive, helps clarify how I feel and what I think. As I would have decided what I feel about the book throughout the reading experience, rarely does the process of writing a review change how I feel about the book.

Reading other people’s review of the same book occasionally change how I felt about the book, only to love the book a little more! So best if I write a review oblivion of what other people might say about the book. 

What is your motivation to assign a rating to a book and declare it to the world?

My motivation to rate a book is to give my review an anchor in numeric terms. At year end I like to sum up my top 10 favourite books of the year and the first point of reference would be my ratings.

My motivation to share the rating with others is to entice like minded readers to start a discussion. I start by rating my reviews on www.Shelfari.com and Amazon, in the same way the ratings in these websites have helped me decide whether I should read the book or not, I hope my ratings in my blog help others the same way, or the least it would do is to spark an interest in reading the book.

If you review a book but don’t rate, why not? What do you feel is your role as reviewer?

I try to rate every books. But if there is an occasion I am unable to do so it is because the book’s good points and bad points have even out each other and I feel indifferent or ambivalent about it. But I would still take the middle path and rate it a 3. On occasions when I skim read a book, I don’t rate them either. I always look back on my own rating definition and make sure that I rate them objectively.

I see my role as a reviewer as sharing my honest thoughts and feelings about the book. I aim to be objective and would not be afraid to say what I feel even risking condemnation from fans of the books I hated. The feedback I usually get is that my review inspires people to want to read the book. This draws from my “glass half full” optimistic take on the book I have read. If you live long enough to know that if you choose to see the good side of life, everywhere you turn your head you will see beautiful things; and if you choose to see the worse of everybody, all you will ever see are grumpy, grouchy people around you. The experience of book reviewing is the same, unless the book is really, really horrible.

I have met readers who opposed to ratings and didn’t like to be told what they should feel about a book. All I can say is that my rating is to serve my purpose primarily, and to persuade other people to read the book, secondary.

Finally…..

Overall, blogging about books brings great value to the blogger and other readers. One year on:

• I am inspired by the many good books I’ve read.
• I am oblivious about Sunday salon, book clubs, Dewey challenges and give aways, prefer to stay on the fringe as spectators.
• I watched with delight as hit rate climb from 5 to 9 hits per day to 50 hits per day.
• I thank everyone who subscribe to my blog and read patiently of my long entry.
• I make lots of new friends that spur me on to read much more and better quality stuff.
• I want to thank you everyone who visited and drop comments. Thanks to the silent lurkers as well.

Having this blog is best thing I ever did.  First entry of my blog, one year from today: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Happy Birthday Bibliojunkie!

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

It’s Stalin Soviet Union 1953, crime does not exist but doubts and accusations are. Millions live in fear. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the State, the wrong word at the wrong time, can send an innocent person to his execution.

Officer Leo Demidov, an idealistic war hero, believes he’s building a perfect society. But after witnessing the interrogation of an innocent man, a veterinarian doctor, his loyalty begins to waver, and when ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa, a suspected dissident, Leo is forced to choose. Choose Raisa, and Leo’s parents will be sent to Gulags and left to die. Choose to denounce and Raisa, and Raisa will die.

Entering the main corridor, Leo wondered how it would feel to be led down to the basement with no leave to appeal and no to call for help. The judicial system could be bypassed entirely. He taught himself to accept that these things existed not just for their own sake. They existed for a reason, a greater good. They existed to terrify. Terror was necessary. Terror protected the Revolution. Without it, Lenin would’ve fallen. Without it, Stalin would’ve fallen. Fear was cultivated. Fear was part of his job, and for this level of fear to be sustained it needed a constant supply of people fed to it.

Leo fell from grace and was posted to a village called Voualsk. Pursued unrelentless by arch enemy Vasili, Leo knew his time is limited. In Moscow, Leo was sent to cover up the death of Officer Fyodor’s son whom the family suspected that their son Arkady was murdered. In Voualsk, heeding the call for justice, Leo decided to investigate the murder of several children all over Russia. The murder trademarks are the same, the children are subject to gruesome murder, emptied of internal organs and snared by a rope at the ankle. The murders always happened near railway stations of towns scattered along the train line from Voualsk to South of Moscow, in Rostov, where the crime is most concentrated. Arkady was Child number 44 murdered. But the state will not admit the crime exists. The crimes are solved by torture and false confessions, choosing scapegoats responsible for the crime. To investigate the crime is to go against the Soviet Union’s authority. With only Raisa on his side, and General Nestorev, Leo risks everything to find a criminal at loose.

On the run, Leo discovers the danger isn’t from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is trying to protect………………

I hardly read thriller, and have no desire to be spooked or feel revolted by descriptions of murders, especially one that involves children. So when my co-worker told me Child 44 is good, (the co-worker who loan me two books, one of whom I abandoned (The American Wife)!), I decided to give it a go.

It’s one of the first multi-dimensional character development thriller I have ever read. The hunt for the murderer did not picked up until half way through the book, but the first half of context settings is absolutely necessary.

Ratings: 4.5/5

Not only did it turn out to be a roller-coaster ride, it was unputdownable and action-packed to the max. Set in a grim, hopeless political setting, harsh weather and poverty, I put my hearts out to the characters who suffered many persecutions; I learnt from the meticulous research of the judicial system and organisation of Stalinist Russia; And then I am pulled into the emotional turmoil and trust issues of Leo and Raisa’s marriage. I relate to Leo’s pain of having to choose between duty and conscience. I was swept away by the near-death adventures and actions, cheering Leo all the way to achieve his objective amidst insurmountable obstacles. And then I was caught by surprise by the many twists and hidden secrets of Leo’s past. (Wow!)

This edition is filled with pages of accolades, Stalinism Statistics and Writer’s interview on using Andrei Chilkalito as the muse for his story’s serial killer.  One review says it all for me, “To have your book optioned for a film is not unusual. To have your first novel chosen is slightly more so. But to have your first novel, written when you are barely 30 years of age, picked by Gladiator director Ridley Scott.. well, that does make people stand up and take noticed. A tale of redemption but deliciously laced with a gritty, grimy undercurrent of repression and harsh Soviet reality. It is an accomplished, smoothly-told tale’ – Daily Express.

I wouldn’t want to forget the twists and plot about this book, for that I have to quote two names that will help me remember the end of the story in the future: Andrei Trofimovich Sidorov and Pavel Trofimovich Sidorov.

Read the book, and find out what it means.

About the writer and the book:

Tom Rob Smith (born 1979) is an English writer. The son of a Swedish mother and an English father, Smith was raised in London where he lives today. After graduating from Cambridge University in 2001, he completed his studies in Italy, studying creative writing for a year. After these studies, he worked as a scriptwriter.

His first novel, Child 44, about a series of child murders in Stalinist Russia, appeared in early 2008 and was translated into 17 languages. It was awarded the 2008 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the year by the Crime Writer’s Association. It was recently a Barnes & Noble recommended book. On July 29, 2008 the book was named on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. In November 2008, he was nominated for the 2008 Costa First Novel Award (former Whitbread). In July 2009 he won the Waverton Good Read Award and British Book Award, Galaxy Prize winner for first novels.

The Housekeeper + The Professor

He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem – ever since a traumatic head injury some 17 years ago, he has lived with only 80minutes of short-term memory.

She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper, a single mother with a 10-year old son, whom the professor called root, nick named Root because of his flat top head that resembles the square root sign. 

Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant mathematical equations from the past. He start each day by asking her shoe size and her birthday. He devises clever maths riddles. For example his wrist watch bears the engraved number of President’s Prize 284 and the Housekeeper’s birth date is February the 22^nd (220):

220: 1+ 2 + 4 + 5 +10 +11 + 20+ 22 + 44 + 55 + 110 = 284

220 = 142 + 71 + 4 + 2 + 1 : 284

The sum of factors of 220 is 284, the sum of the factors of 284 is 220. The pair is called Amicable numbers. As the relationship of the professor and the housekeeper is amicable, as if both of them are connected up the constellations of the night sky. 

The Professor’s fascination with the prime numbers in all their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her little boy. With each new equation, the three souls forge affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory. The bond fortifies through incidents of a day-out at the baseball game, the crisis of Root cutting his own risk, Professor falling sick after the game, a trip to the dentist and the barber, and a birthday celebration of Root.

The book introduced many mathematical and numerical theories. The concept of zero, the triangle numbers, the factors, the prime numbers, Fermat’s last theorem, calculating the weight and speed of baseball trajectory and home runs. I must admit I don’t understand all of them. In school, I have a love-hate relationship with Maths. I am a big fan of certain Maths topics and can’t stand some. I love calculus, algebra, angles and trigonometry. Looking back now and reflect that majority of the maths I learnt, I came to the awful realisation that none of it bears any practical significance and application to my daily lives. But the book introduces us to the wonders of mathematics, its place in the universal truth. As it is said:

The goal of mathematics is to discover the truth.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, you won’t find them in material things and natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression – in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.

How true. When I solve a maths question, I have great sense of peace. If I don’t, it bugs me endlessly until I solved it. The quest for eternal truth is ingrained. No other things can prove the wonders of truth like numbers sometimes. When a maths solution is revealed, I am always filled with wonders and awe.

The only thing that befuddled me was the question “Who discovered zero?” – refer page 140. The Professor said it was an unknown Indian. But I thought it was an Arab who discovered it. The Arabic name of zero was Sifr. Curiosity killed the cat, I checked Wikipedia and I am able to clarify now that:

In 976 Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi, in his Keys of the Sciences, remarked that if, in a calculation, no number appears in the place of tens, a little circle should be used “to keep the rows.” This circle the Arabs called sifr. The word “zero” came via French zéro from Venetian zero, which (together with cipher) came via Italian zefiro from Arabic صفر, ṣafira = “it was empty”, ṣifr = “zero”, “nothing”.

The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol for separation is attributed to India where by the 9^th century CE practical calculations were carried out using zero, which was treated like any other number, even in case of division.

Most early civilisations recognises “nothingness”. But it was the Arabs who discovered it, and the Indians who used it as numbers. That’s sorted. Now I know the truth.

Rating: 4/5

This is not a romance book, rather it’s a simple story about three unlikely people sharing a strong bond. Ogawa prose is simple, matter-of-factly, unassuming, telling the story as it is. All the characters have no names. The story is told in the eyes of the Housekeeper. I did not realise I was deeply invested with the characters until the Housekeeper was accused by the Professor’s sister-in-law of having ulterior motive to take good care of the professor, out of her obligation and agency contract to do so. I was deeply saddened by the fact that of all the good memories that the Housekeeper and son, Root have with the Professor, none of it will be remembered because of the Professor’s short memory. Yet these memories were an important part of the Housekeeper’s and the Son’s lives.

This is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present and about the curious equations that can create a family where one did not exist before. There is no big action, big bang or dramatic plot. But a quiet reflection and awakenings of things that are left unsaid.

The Road from Damascus by Robin Yassin-Kassab

It is only when you know the Higher Factor that you will know the true situation of the present religions and of unbelief itself. And unbelief itself is a religion with its own form of belief. – Ahmad Yasavi

Atheism indicates strength of mind, but only up to a certain point. – Pensée 157, Pascal

It’s summer 2001, second generation Londoner Sami Traifi’s life is in turmoil. Not sure of where it went wrong – or how to put it right, he makes a brief trip to visit relatives in Damascus. But there, hidden a family secret, things only seem to get worse. 

Back home in London, the non-believer Sami must face up to his unfinished Phd, his unemployment, his fraying marriage;  to top it off his wife’s decision to wear the hijab and her brother’s extremist angry hip-hop Islam. 

On Sami’s journey in search of his belief and identity in his adopted country, he landed himself in police custody twice, once for smoking spliffs and getting high, another for looking like Islamic Extremist. As he rots in his life, his identity and ethnicity is about to undergo a massive change:

Years by now had passed, and the world had changed since Sami made his academic plans. The blocks with which he’d built his personality – Arabism and poetry – had begun to rot. Which wasn’t only Sami’s fault. The whole world rotted. It heated up grew smokier, more fetid. The Arab part in particular rotted faster than the rest. Arab culture and ambition shriveled. Poets died and were not replaced. Religion grew in response.

This is a thinking-person fiction. The writer amalgamate politics, race, religions, displacement, family, marital problems.. …. and concocted a complex philosophical reasoning and stories of Sami as we get inside the heads of the protagonist and understand why he is as confused as he is.

The war illusioned them, which gave them another reason to hold on to each other. It’s only by being disillusioned that you had illusions in the first place.

For the first time ever, I read a book that discussed London counterculturalists, Islamic Fundamentalism, Secular Fundamentalism (this is new), Atheist Muslim (such as Sami), Idealist (as Tom Field), Agnostics, hip-hop islamist (Ammar), Shii and Shia, people who believe in different things who are given interesting labels…..

“You want to know what I think to help you know what you should think. Am I right? Well, that won’t work. Either you’re a born believer, meaning you subscribe to a cultural belief like you subscribe to gravity, or you decide for yourself. The latter, in your case. Decide for yourself. It’s a matter of choice. Belief is good when it increases knowledge. It’s bad when it doesn’t. if it develops what we can call spirit, or awareness, it’s good. If it smothers it, it’s bad.” – Tom Field, Sami’s Phd mentor.

Ratings: 4.5/5

Yassin-Kassab writes very boldly about taboo topics. We are introduced to Islam, the Quran, signs of time, inheritance law, and why Muslim women chose the headscarf on decision other than religion. We are introduced to the origin and culture of Arabs. The quirks and inconvenience of being one after 9-11. Arabism and poetry.

Marwan said the Arabs are freerer inside their heads than the English because the Arabs never believe what they’re told. That’s why Arab governments need police and fund and torture chambers.

It’s also about multicultural London. The book is so multifaceted, and all encompassing that, I find it very hard to provide a coherent review without appearing as if I’m waffling. Except to say that, if you intend to pick this book up, take the plunge and be expected to blow your mind away. If the book doesn’t make you exhilarated, at least it made you think.

This book has got nothing much to do Damascus. What I didn’t like so much is the way the characters are introduced and given a chapter on centre stage, only to watch them disappeared into oblivion in the subsequent chapters. The only constant is Sami and wife, Muntaha. It is brave, at times funny contemporary novel that ask questions about the choices we make, and ponders how these choices affect not only us, but also those we love the most.

Chinese Whisper – The true story behind Britain’s hidden army of labour

You know the people in this book.

You’ll remember the harassed waitresses from your local Chinese restaurant. You’ve noticed those builders across the street working funny hours and without helmets. You’ve bought bootleg DVDs from the DVD sellers.  You’ve eaten the lettuce they picked, or bought the microwave they assembled. The word ‘cockle pickers’, ‘Morecambe Bay’, ‘Chinese illegals found dead in lorry in Dover’ will ring a bell.

Hsiao-Hung Pai’s Book ‘Chinese Whispers’ examines one sector of this labour army; probably the most vulnerable and most exploited group, the Chinese migrant worker. To get a firsthand account of the plight of these people, Hsia-Hung Pai went undercover posing as a newly arrived migrant shortly after the Morecambe Bay Tragedy in 2004 (elements of the book form the basis of Nick Broomfield’s film ‘Ghosts’); ‘Chinese Whispers’ documents her experiences in the British black economy. Hsiao-hung begins by describing the reality of the effects of globalisation and the boom of the new Chinese economy.

While some of us are worrying about business ethics and if our clothes are possibly made from sweatshops operating in India, China or Vietnam, we failed to look into the sweatshops which are operating inside Britain.

The exploitation of these Chinese workers always happened in the following process chain:

1. They scrambled for loans from relatives and friends and paid an estimate between £18,000 to £22,000 to the middlemen (snakehead) to get them to the UK.
2. They are bundled up in inhumane condition (in a boat, lorry) to get across the borders. Some of them died before they reached their destination.
3. They are moved to accommodation provided by the employer / agent, usually pay estimate £50 per week for a bed space of mattress in a room shared with many others illegals.
4. They queue up at temp recruitment agencies to get whatever job which is available each day, and they have to pay agency fees for every new job they seek, and bribe the recruitment agent to give them preferential treatment to secure a job for the day.
5. They are then transported to work sites in the morning, short half hour breaks, and transported to another site to work the night shift.
6. They are paid pittance. At times they are not paid to the equivalent hours they worked or not paid at all, and in a brothel, if it gets busted by the police, the workers do not get paid either. They then spend their hard earned money to pay the agency, their loans back home and their family at home. Sending between £666 (10k RMB) to £900, everything that they earned to their family.
7. If they are injured in the course of work, A&E hospital unit might treat them, but they have no access to GP or follow-up medical treatments. Many illegal workers developed asthma and high blood pressure in an appalling working conditions and succumb to black market medication to treat themselves.
8. These illegals are prone to robbery, as the robbers knew that the illegals can’t report them.
9. They live in fear of police raid. If they are caught by the police, the next stop will be detention centre for illegal immigrants. Chances for approval for asylum seekers are less than 3%.

This army of workers numbers somewhere between 310,000 and 570,000 people (UK Home Office 2007). They come from all over the world, different races and different languages united only in their poverty, overwork and underpay. These members of the British ‘Sub-Economy’ are not protected by any employment law or support group; they have no access to legal services, education, housing or healthcare and are made ripe for exploitation due to their ‘illegal migrant’ status. The work they perform is refused by established British workers. It’s done in atrocious, hazardous conditions with illegally long hours and rewarded with pitiful wages.

To give you an idea of how they are paid:

• A basket of leek is paid 80p per basket, the writer spent 4 hours picking 4 baskets and earned £3.20 demoralising wages.
• 700 lettuces are cut each day, a £35 for a 12-hour day, work out at under £3 per hour. Minimum wage at 2002 was £4.77 per hour then.
• The Chinese restaurant workers are paid a base-rate of £5 per day and if they don’t get tips they don’t get paid extra.

The book mentioned locations where I personally witnessed the exploitation of cheap labour, in Chinese restaurants, Longsight in Manchester. I always wonder what motivate illegal migrants to risk everything they have, even their lives, to come work in a hostile working conditions. I think it is desperate poverty that drives these people to Britain’s shores, and a good dose of naivety, ambition and optimism to ensure a better life for their families at home.

‘For every pound I’m making here, I always feel I’m sinking further to my knees.’ His generosity and his enthusiasm for life have been crushed out of him. Now he’s reserved and untrusting man.

With a reputation for wealth, ‘fair-play’ and friendliness, the UK is a choice destination. But arriving in England they find themselves at the bottom of the heap of an already established exploitative hierarchical system of snakehead smugglers, gang masters and employers who turn a blind eye. Isolated, disoriented and unable to speak the language they soon find themselves working in indentured labour conditions, paying off their families debts on ludicruously meagre wages.

Perhaps the thing that made me most angry was the snakehead smugglers, gang masters and employers who are of the same ethnicity and who had suffered the same journey of being a migrant before has a big hand in exploiting these new group of immigrants. The eagerness of Chinese co-patriots to join in this exploitation and the established Chinese communities’ tacit collusion in the system is one that I could not stomach. By publishing this book Hsiao-Hung Pai has faced threats of violence and legal action from members of the Chinese community for revealing their complicity in this exploitation.

These exploitations begin at home, in China. Universally portrayed as the poster boy of capitalistic success, China also has an underclass of unemployed workers left out of the economic miracle, workers who were laid-off from bankrupt state industries that previously supplied much of the country with stable and guaranteed employment. These people now find themselves with obsolete skills in a massive sea of cheap labour, living in grinding poverty, desperate to survive but with little prospect of change. Out of desperation families will borrow huge amounts of money to pay people-smugglers to send their sons and daughters to the west in search of employment.

Strong measures from the policy maker should be implemented and enforced to safeguard Britain’s border; but once the immigrants made it to Britain’s shores, it is only humane to offer basic care and services, and if there is a labour gap in the country, to legalise their status in the country; or face immediate deportation. The idea is to deter exploitation of cheap labour within the country.

Rating: 4/5

This book is well researched and told in first hand experience as an undercover. The writer also followed up with the migrants’ progress after a few years. They have paid up some debts but life is pretty much the same, waiting for the day they could earn enough to pay up all their debts and some money to take home.

I feel humbled by the stories of the immigrants. I hope there will come a time they earn enough and return to their countries to start some business and a new life. The only thing they wanted to do was to provide a better life for their families, and going abroad to seek a better work is their only know-how.

‘As breadwinners for our families, we want to maintain our dignity. While having to sell out labour, we don’t want to sell out basic self-respect.’

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More facts on Immigration:

• There are between 310,000 and 570,000 illegal immigrants in the UK, according to Home Office estimates
• If allowed to live legally, they would pay more than £1bn in tax each year
• Deporting them would cost £4.7bn and leave acute shortages of cleaners, care workers and hotel staff if allowed to stay, the net benefit of nearly £6bn would pay for 300 new schools, 12 district hospitals or 200,000 new nurses
• Nearly 50% of foreign-born immigrants leave Britain within five years
• Migrants fill 90% of low-paid jobs in London and account for 29% of the capital’s workforce. London is the UK’s fastest-growing region
• Legal migrants comprise 8.7% of the population, but contribute 10.2% of all taxes. Each immigrant pays an average of £7,203 in tax, compared with £6,861 for non-migrant workers
• There were 25,715 people claiming asylum last year. If allowed to work, they would generate £123m for the Treasury (Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent, The Independent Friday, 31 March 2006)

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About the Writer: 

Hsiao-Hung Pai (b. Taipei, Taiwan, 1968) is a writer on migrant labour issues, this book was short-listed for the 2009 Orwell Prize. Pai has lived in the UK since 1991, and holds master’s degrees from the University of Wales, University of Durham and the University of Westminster. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei County.

She contributes to The Guardian newspaper and many UK-Chinese publications.

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Peony in Love

Love is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again. Love is not love at its fullest if one who lives is unwilling to die for it, or if it cannot restore to life one who has died. And must love that comes in dream necessarily be unreal? For there is no lack of dream lovers in this world. Only for those whose love must be fulfilled on the pillow, and for whom affection deepens only after retirement from office, is it an entirely corporeal matter. – preface to The Peony Pavilion – Tang XianZu, 1598, Tang Dynasty.

Peony has neither seen nor spoken to any man other than her father, a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Nor has she ever ventured outside the cloistered women’s quarters of the family villa. As her 16th birthday approaches she finds herself betrothed to a man she does not know, but Peony has dreams of her own.

Her father engages a theatrical troupe to perform scenes from the Peony pavilion, a Chinese epic opera, in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. ‘Unmarried girls’ should not be seen in public,’ says Peony’s mother, but her father allows the women to watch from behind a screen. Here peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man and is immediately bewitched. She secretly met the stranger 3 times while the opera of The Peony Pavilion is played out on her family ground so that her family wouldn’t notice that she is missing. But the 3^rd and final secret rendezvous attempt went awry and Peony is locked up by her mother 2 months following up to her wedding. Besotted, lovesickness, and certain that she is not marrying the stranger she fell in love with, she starved herself to death. It was on the brink of death that she discovered the man she is about to marry was in fact her beloved poet and she was silly not to look up when her father announced the impending marriage of Peony to this man, that coincidentally was the love of her life!

So a quarter into the book, the reader is in for shock when Peony died and roamed the earth as a ghost. It’s decisive moment like this that I am convinced that sometimes reading is a form of perversion when you know a story as such is so dumb but you are intrigued enough to read it till the end……

Thus Peony began her life as a ghost. Having read first hand experience of Elspeth the ghost in Her Fearful Symmetry, this is an elaborative version of the biography of a ghost. Peony watch over her family, watch how her mother grieved for her but Peony deserves no honour as a daughter to be given a tablet in the ancestor’s altar nor is she given a ghost marriage to be invited home to her fiancé’s, Wu Ren, house. How was that I – who’d been born into privilege, who’d been educated who was pretty and clever – had had so many bad things happen? How the belief of intelligent and beautiful women are too clever for their own good and almost always met with more life tragedies than if the girl is simple and naive. Peony watched as 5 years on, Wu Ren, the poet, took a new wife Tan Ze, Peony’s vicious cousin. Peony intervened as she guided her cousin’s thoughts to provide further commentaries to the opera of The Peony Pavilion, guided her thoughts to please her husband, treat her mother-in-law with respect, helped her during child labour, in the hope that Wu Ren would recognise her ghost presence as fashioned after The Peony Pavilion when Du LiNiang died and met MengMei in his dream. All these efforts expend to no avail, as Wu Ren is not superstitious enough to acknowledge Peony’s existence, not until Tan Ze died and Wu Ren faced the prospect of taking on a new wife, Yi, a decision which is indirectly influenced by Peony.

The writer has taken the liberty in painting an interesting afterlife. Lisa See also painted a sorrowful life without family and loved ones with her in the afterlife. Peony met the spirit of her grandmother who told her of the atrocities committed to women during the change from Ming to Ching dynasty. The selfishness of her grandfather and father who made their women suffered. You can even have a meaningful conversation with your mother in ghost land!

“Lacking pity, one is not human; Lacking shame, one is not human; Lacking a sense of pity, one is not Lacking a sense of right and wrong, one is not human.” Mama said.

“But I am not human. I’m a hungry ghost.”

“But you’ve experienced all that, haven’t you? You’ve felt pity, shame, remorse, and sadness for everything that happened to Tan Ze, right?” Mama asked.

Of course I had. I’d driven myself into exile as punishment for what I’d done.

“How can one test for humanity?” Mama asked. “By whether or not you cast a shadow or leave prints in the sand? Tang ZianZu gave you the answers in the opera you love so well when he wrote that no one can exist without joy, anger, grief, fear, love, hate and desire. So, you have it from the Book of Rites from The Peony Pavilion, and from me, that the Seven emotions are what make us human. You still have within yourself. You have to take all your ghostly attributes and put them to good use.”

Even a ghost has human attributes. So Peony begins her unforgettable journey of love, desire, sorrow and redemption.

Rating: 3.5/5

The story expounded a lot of bizarre Chinese traditions, superstition and rituals, Chinese history, wisdom and the overdramatic take on love and relationship. Women are expected to be deferential and not encouraged to meddle with art and poetry. Women are raised for the ultimate aim of husband’s family, to honour his name, his career and tend to his every need. The superstitious belief in appeasing a ghost, and the belief of a family ghost will watch over and bless its family after death, and the ascend of different layers of heaven, ghost marriages, and the rites and rituals what one should do to appease the ghosts during the hungry ghost festival, and what one should do so that the soul would ceased to be a ghost and rest in peace and many more!!!

If you think back that this is a story set in the early Ching dynasty around 1694, with entrenched belief and superstition in the Chinese society, this is a very believable story. It brings you back to the practice of Ancient Chinese traditions and enticed readers to immerse in the story through the lives and ghosts of the characters of that era. I am amazed as to how detailed and knowledgeable of The Peony Pavilion opera the writer had imparted, even Chinese poetry is translated to English (I was more surprised when I found out that this book was written by an American who has a Chinese sounding name, as I assumed that such detailed cultural knowledge and beliefs would only have come from a true bred Chinese. Lisa See proved how wrong I was!). 

This Bloombury 2008 edition also comes with an interview with Lisa See and a reading guide.

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About the Writer:

Lisa See is a Chinese American writer and novelist, born in Paris February 18, 1955, but has spent many years in Los Angeles, especially Los Angeles Chinatown. The Chinese side of her family has had a great impact on her life and work.  Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995), Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), Dragon Bones (2003), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007), and Shanghai Girls. Flower Net, The Interior, and Dragon Bones make up the Red Princess mystery series. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love focus on the lives of Chinese women in the 19th and 17th centuries respectively. Shanghai Girls (2009), chronicles the lives of two sisters who come to Los Angeles in arranged marriages and face, among other things, the pressures put on Chinese-Americans during the anti-Communist mania of the 1950’s.

The book Peony in Love is inspired by her research on the publication of The Three Wives’ Commentary of The Peony Pavilion Opera in 1694 who is the first book of its kind to be written and published by women anywhere in the world.

Lisa is the West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly (1983-1996); has written articles for Vogue, Self, and More; has written the libretto for the opera based on On Gold Mountain, and has helped develop the Family Discovery Gallery for the Autry Museum, which depicts 1930s Los Angeles from the perspective of her father as a seven-year-old boy. Her exhibition On Gold Mountain: A Chinese American Experience was featured in the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, and the Smithsonian. See is also a public speaker. She has written for and led in many cultural events emphasizing the importance of Los Angeles and Chinatown. Among her awards and recognitions are the Organization of Chinese American Women’s 2001 award as National Woman of the Year and the 2003 History Makers Award presented by the Chinese American Museum. See serves as a Los Angeles City Commissioner.

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