Download or read book Petulia s Rouge Tin Penguin Specials written by Su Tong and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2018-06-08 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who would have anticipated that Petulia, stripped of her silk gowns, would be forced to denounce the Red Delight Pavilion? Or believed that Autumn Grace would cry in desperation as nuns shave off her locks? After years working side-by-side, their sudden goodbye was the first sign of a changing society. Still, the scent of rouge filling their memories keeps them close, despite the twists and turns that life throws at them. Until one day, the promise of love and stability becomes a temptation neither can deny. . .

Download or read book The Late Hector Kipling written by David Thewlis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hector Kipling is a famous artist. But Hector is not as famous as his best friend, Lenny Snook. And as they are standing in the Tate Gallery one afternoon, Hector's life begins to unravel. For a painter, this existential crisis is the place from which great art is born. If the painter happens to be a forty-three-year-old man with a girlfriend away from home, it is the recipe for disaster. Soon it's all Hector can do to keep it together -- between his therapist who shows up drunk at a party and introduces herself to his parents, an irresistible young female poet with a terrifying taste for S&M, and a deranged stalker with an oil-and-canvas-inspired vendetta, just trying to cope is enough to make a man cry. As the events in his life threaten to drive him toward full-blown dementia, Hector finds himself in a bizarre and murderous pursuit of a man threatening to kill him in return, spiraling into a hysterically surreal Hitchcocklike thriller -- the story of how a man can become desperate enough to shoot his way out of a midlife crisis. At turns warm, witty, and joyfully absurd, David Thewlis's wicked comedy marks the debut of a savagely funny and observant literary talent.

Download or read book A Billion Voices written by David Moser and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? 'Chinese' is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the twentieth century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, all fought linguistic wars to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China's language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our conceptions of what it means to speak and be Chinese. 'If you want to know what the language situation of China is on the ground and in the trenches, and you only have time to read one book, this is it. A veritable tour de force, in just a little over a hundred pages, David Moser has filled this brilliant volume with linguistic, political, historical, and cultural data that are both reliable and enlightening. Written with captivating wit and exacting expertise, A Billion Voices is a masterpiece of clear thinking and incisive exposition.' Victor H. Mair, American sinologist, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature 'David Moser explains the complex aspects of Putonghua against the backdrop of history, delivering the information with authority and simplicity in a style accessible both to speakers of Chinese and those who are simply fascinated by the language. All of the questions that people have asked me about Chinese over the years, and more, are answered in this book. The history of Putonghua and the vital importance of creating a common language is a story David Moser brings to life in an enjoyable way.' Laszlo Montgomery, The China History Podcast

Download or read book Dear Hong Kong An Elegy For A City Penguin Specials written by Xu Xi and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2017-07-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xu Xi’s body of work witnesses her turbulent love affair with her home-city of Hong Kong. In this probing memoir, she unravels her recently finalised decision to leave the city for good. She critiques a Hong Kong that has, in her eyes, lost its way. And yet, it is only out of the city’s enduring presence in her life, both in the form of memory and periodic homecomings, that she has carved out a personal and literary identity. Dear Hong Kong is a profound reflection on the life of Hong Kong, personified and interrogated by one of its most lucid writers.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo written by John Garnaut and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo is a shocking and revelatory exposé of China's most controversial 'statesman' Bo Xilai, by journalist John Garnaut, available exclusively as a digital-only Penguin Special. When news of the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai's wife reached Western attention, it was apparent that, as with many events in the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics, there was more to the story. Now, as the Party's 18th National Congress oversees the biggest leadership transition in decades, and installs the Bo family's long-time rival Xi Jinping as president, China's rulers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their poisonous internal divisions behind closed doors. Bo Xilai's breathtaking fall from grace is an extraordinary tale of excess, murder, defection, political purges and ideological clashes going back to Mao himself, as the princeling sons of the revolutionary heroes ascend to control of the Party. China watcher John Garnaut examines how Bo's stellar rise through the ranks troubled his more reformist peers, as he revived anti-'capitalist roader' sentiment, even while his family and associates enjoyed the more open economy's opportunities. Amid fears his imminent elevation to the powerful Standing Committee was leading China towards another destructive Cultural Revolution, have his opponents seized their chance to destroy Bo and what he stood for? The trigger was his wife Gu Kailai's apparently paranoid murder of an English family friend, which exposed the corruption and brutality of Bo's outwardly successful administration of the massive city of Chongqing. It also led to the one of the highest-level attempted defections in Communist China's history when Bo's right-hand man, police chief Wang Lijun, tried to escape the ruins of his sponsor's reputation. Garnaut explains how this incredible glimpse into the very personal power struggles within the CCP exposes the myth of the unified one-party state. With China approaching super-power status, today's leadership shuffle may set the tone for international relations for decades. Here, Garnaut reveals a particularly Chinese spin on the old adage that the personal is political. 'His insight is unique and well applied to this extraordinary, intergenerational set of events that Hollywood couldn't dream up if it tried' ABC Sydney John Garnaut is China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, in the Fairfax Media stable, and also writes for Foreign Policy magazine. He joined Fairfax in 2002 as an economics journalist after working as a commercial lawyer. His work on China has been recognised with several awards, including the 2009 Walkley Award for Scoop of the Year, for reporting the detention of Australian Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu. John lived in Beijing for two years in the 1980s, while his father was posted as the Australian ambassador, and returned there with his wife and children in 2007.

Download or read book A Perfect Crime written by A Yi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a normal day in provincial China, a teenager goes about his regular business, but he’s also planning the brutal murder of his only friend. He lures her over, strangles her, stuffs her body into the washing machine and flees town, whereupon a perilous game of cat-and-mouse begins. A shocking investigation into the despair that traps the rural poor as well as a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense, A Perfect Crime is a thrilling and stylish novel about a motiveless murder that echoes Kafka’s absurdism, Camus’ nihilism and Dostoyevsky’s depravity. With exceptional tonal control, A Yi steadily reveals the psychological backstory that enables us to make sense of the story’s dramatic violence and provides chillingly apt insights into a country on the cusp of enormous social, political and economic change.

Download or read book Xi Jinping A Lowy Institute Paper Penguin Special written by Richard McGregor and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xi Jinping has transformed China at home and abroad with a speed and aggression that few foresaw when he came to power in 2012. Finally, he is meeting resistance, both at home among disgruntled officials and disillusioned technocrats, and abroad from an emerging coalition of Western nations that seem determined to resist China’s geopolitical and high-tech expansion. With the United States and China at loggerheads, Richard McGregor outlines how the world came to be split in two.

Download or read book A Wary Embrace A Lowy Institute Paper Penguin Special written by Bobo Lo and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ?With Western countries consumed by domestic problems, will it be China and Russia that now define the rules of global politics? In a disorderly world, each has become increasingly assertive, and their partnership has emerged from relative obscurity to acquire a new prominence. Yet appearances are deceptive. Beijing and Moscow have shown no capacity to cooperate on grand strategy or establish new international norms. This is no authoritarian alliance, but a partnership of strategic convenience - pragmatic, calculating and constrained.

Download or read book The Badlands written by Paul French and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Badlands by Paul French - a gripping criminal portrait of pre-communist Peking, from the interntional bestselling author of Midnight in Peking The Badlands, a warren of narrow hutongs in the eastern district of pre-communist Peking, had its heyday in the 1930s. Home to the city's drifters, misfits and the odd bohemian, it was a place of opium dens, divebars, brothels, flophouses and cabarets, and was infamous for its ability to satisfy every human desire from the exotically entertaining to the criminally depraved. These vignettes of eight non-Chinese residents of the precinct White Russians, Americans and Europeans bring the Badlands vividly back to life, providing a short but potent account of a place and a way of life until now largely forgotten, but here rendered unforgettable. Praise for Midnight in Peking: 'An instant true crime classic. Grips from the first page to the last' David Peace, author of Red Riding and The Damned United 'Fascinating and irresistible. I couldn't put it down' John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 'Written in the style of a gripping murder mystery, but all the facts are true' Kirsty Lang, BBC Radio 4 (Book of the Week) 'Engrossing true crime whodunnit... A terrific read' Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times Born in London, Paul French has lived in China for more than 10 years. He is a widely published analyst and commentator on China; his books include a history of North Korea, a biography of Shanghai adman and adventurer Carl Crow, and a history of foreign correspondents in China.

Download or read book The Membranes written by Chi Ta-wei and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality. First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

Download or read book Love Scams written by Sofija Stefanovic and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sofija Stefanovic visits her eighty-year-old friend Bill and suspects he's being scammed over the internet - not for the first time. Compelled by Bill's devastating stories of online dating, heartbreak and bankruptcy, Sofija gets drawn into the underworld of romance scams. Her investigations take her to victims, experts and ultimately to her computer, where she uses a dead relative's photo to set up her own senior's dating profile. In the hope of interviewing a scammer, Sofija wades into murky territory as her lies grow and her online relationships get personal. As she moves through this confusing world, Sofija finds herself confronted by questions about loneliness, love and greed. You're Just Too Good To Be True is a sometimes very funny and sometimes desperately poignant investigation into the dark underside of love in the digital age. 'So well done. Bill's story is an amplification of the madness and delusion we've all gone through chasing love.' John Safran

Download or read book Professor Su Jing an in His Later Years written by Dong Jun and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Su Jing’an is a respected academic and a man of habit. He follows his routine to the tick of the clocks in his study and nothing can stop him from having his afternoon coffee. Nothing that is, but old age. When a young academic caretaker is sent to look after Su Jing’an, he is barely the man everyone remembers. Questioning his identity, Professor Su questions all of us – who are we, and where do we belong?

Download or read book The Embarrassed Colonialist A Lowy Institute Paper Penguin Special written by Sean Dorney and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2016-02-15 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years after independence, Papua New Guinea is the largest single recipient of aid from Australia. Yet Australians seem to be largely ambivalent about the country. Few Australians know the history of our colonial rule in PNG and our long ties to the country are quickly being forgotten. PNG expert Sean Dorney examines PNG's weaknesses and strengths since independence and argues that, for moral and practical reasons, Australia needs to reconnect with Papua New Guinea. It is time we shed our embarrassment about our colonial past and embrace our relationship with our nearest neighbour.

Download or read book Gregg Shorthand written by John Robert Gregg and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice Penguin Specials written by Nam Le and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young Vietnamese-Australian named Nam, in his final year at the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop, is trying to find his voice on the page. When his father, a man with a painful past, comes to visit, Nam's writing and sense of self are both deeply changed. Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice is a deeply moving story of identity, family and the wellsprings of creativity, from Nam Le's multi-award-winning collection The Boat. 'A tight and densely emotional journey that sucked me in and contained as much power as the lengthy title.' Killings, the Kill Your Darlings blog

Download or read book Man of Contradictions A Lowy Institute Paper Penguin Special written by Ben Bland and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a riverside shack to the presidential palace, Joko Widodo surged to the top of Indonesian politics on a wave of hope for change. However, six years into his presidency, the former furniture maker is struggling to deliver the reforms that Indonesia desperately needs. Despite promising to build Indonesia into an Asian powerhouse, Jokowi, as he is known, has faltered in the face of crises, from COVID-19 to an Islamist mass movement. Man of Contradictions, the first English-language biography of Jokowi, argues that the president embodies the fundamental contradictions of modern Indonesia. He is caught between democracy and authoritarianism, openness and protectionism, Islam and pluralism. Jokowi’s incredible story shows what is possible in Indonesia – and it also shows the limits.

Download or read book Borrowed Spaces Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong Penguin Specials written by Christopher DeWolf and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2017-07-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where have all the fishballs gone? From a journalist deeply attuned to the subtleties of Hong Kong life comes Borrowed Spaces, a chronicle of the ways in which the grassroots citizens of Hong Kong reshape their city to make up for the shortcomings of their bureaucratic government. Mango trees sprouting on roundabouts, fishball stalls and neon signs: these are just some of the Hong Kong icons that are casualties in the struggle to reclaim public spaces. Christopher DeWolf explores the history of Hong Kong’s urban growth through the daily tug of war between the people’s needs to express themselves and government regulations.