Asia Literary Agency · Intan Paramaditha Apple & Knife ... love, to the melancholy ... the stories weave an intricate tapestry building hopes, lost childhoods, and the

RIGHTS GUIDE

SPRING 2018

Asia Literary Agency


We sell rights direct to the USA and the UK and work

with a variety of agencies around the world to find the

largest audience of readers possible. These sub-

agencies include:

Baltic – Andrew Nurnberg Associates

China, Taiwan, et al – Grayhawk Literary Agency

France – Linwood Messina

Germany – Anoukh Foerg

Italy – Berla & Griffini

Japan – Japan Uni Agency

South Korea – Danny Hong Agency, EYA, PubHub,

Enters Korea and KCC

Spain – MB Agencia Literaria

Russia – Andrew Nurnberg Associates

Kelly Falconer, Founder

[email protected]

Tel: +44 (0) 7833 655 678 (UK)

www.asialiteraryagency.org

@AsiaLitAgency

AsiaLitAgency

Territory contacts



Fiction

Maya Abu-Alhayyat Bloodtype

The Blue Pool of Questions

K. Anis Ahmed Good Night, Mr Kissinger

The World in My Hands

Bae Suah A Greater Music

Recitation

Tew Bunnag Curtain of Rain

The Time of the Lotus

Cheon Myeong-kwan The Whale

Sharon Chung Silent Truths: A Novel of Hong Kong

Colin Falconer Lucifer Falls

Tim Fitts The Soju Club

Melanie Grabowski Crooked Little Smile

Han Yujoo The Impossible Fairy Tale

Ayesha Heble Third Person Singular

Chris Larrson Deception Island

James Lee Ghostworks

Ming Liu Our Man in China

Leza Lowitz Up from the Sea

Rosie Milne Olivia & Sophia: The Adventures of Sir

Thomas Stamford Raffles, the Remarkable

Founder of Singapore, as Told through the

Eyes of His Two Wives

Intan Paramaditha Apple & Knife

The Wandering

Warwick Woodhouse The Verglas File

SPECIAL FEATURE PRIYA’S SHAKTI

Poetryko ko thett the burden of being burmese



Stories, secrets, songs, rumours and lies. This is all Jumana has as she moves with

her sister, Yara, from Beirut to Amman to Tunis to Jerusalem, while seeking truths

about who she really is. On the day of her father’s death (the day that Malika, the

infamous midwife of East Jerusalem also dies) and the setting for the book’s

opening chapter, another element is added to her investigative arsenal: her blood

type. Hers could not have been inherited from her father, the father she sometimes

longed for, but always despised.

A different member of the family narrates each of the chapters that follow, each in a

different time and place. Jumana narrates the second chapter describing her

childhood living with her paternal aunt’s family in Amman. A hungry Jumana

struggles to understand the various kinds of love and human relations in a world

where these relations are mediated by secrets, material transactions, and the latent

but ever-present threat of physical, emotional and sexual violence. She recognises

her Lebanese mother only through a photograph, and believes her mother

abandoned her and her sister. She knows her absent father only through a voice on

the telephone. He holds a significant role in the Palestinian liberation movement and

the position of patriarch in the extended family.

Bloodtype is a story about truth, and its relation to identity and belonging, from one

of Palestine's most acclaimed and award-winning multi-genre writers.

Born in 1980 in Lebanon, Maya Abu-Alhayyat is a Palestinian novelist, poet and

children’s writer. She has published three collections of poetry: Home Dresses and

Wars (Dar Alahlyah, 2016), This Smile, That Heart (Dar Raya, 2012), What She Said

about Him (House of Poetry & Qattan Foundation, 2007); and two other

novels: Grains of Sugar (House of Poetry, 2004) and Threshold of Heavy Spirit (Ogarit,

2011), as well as several children’s books. In 2005 she received the Young Creative

Writer Award by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, followed in 2006 with the Young

Writers Award for Poetry from the A. M. Qattan Foundation.

Her writing has featured in several international journals and magazines, and has

been translated into English, French, German, Swedish and Korean. More recently,

she has also turned to acting, with starring roles in Though I Know the River Is Dry

(2013), Love, Theft and Other Entanglements (2015) and Bab Ela'mod: Damascus

Gate (2015). Since 2013 Maya has worked as the director of the Palestinian Writing

Workshop in Birzeit. She currently lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children.

Rights available:

World (ex Arabic)

Rights sold:

Dar Al Adab-Lebanon

(Arabic)

MAYA ABU-ALHAYYATBloodtype

About the author

Fiction

About the book



‘Maya Abu-Alhayyat’s haunting, evocative text and Hassan Manasrah’s

exquisitely gorgeous art combine to make a book worth holding very close. Give

it to all your friends, big and little. We meet a man who lives his whole life with

questions, then simply dives into them. He reminds us of the people we love

most. He is the sea and the sky. He is Palestine and the United States and

anywhere else you ever loved that did not quite live up to Best Dreams of Justice

and Fairness.’

Naomi Shihab Nye, acclaimed poet and award-winning author of Habibi

A picture book, suitable for children of all ages, The Blue Pool of Questions, is

about a man who doesn’t quite fit in to a city full of busy people who don’t have

much time for his weird songs, flower arrangements and especially for … his

questions! One day, he asks so many questions that they form a giant pool in

the middle of the city and stop everyone in their tracks. The man gathers up his

courage to dive into the pool looking for answers, but what will he find?

Through award-winning illustrations from Hassan Manasrah and translated by

Hanan Awad, this poetic tale underscores the necessity of asking questions, and

the importance of breaking free from the status quo.

Born in 1980 in Lebanon, Maya Abu-Alhayyat is a Palestinian novelist, poet and

children’s writer. She has published three collections of poetry: Home Dresses

and Wars (Dar Alahlyah, 2016), This Smile, That Heart (Dar Raya, 2012), What She

Said about Him (House of Poetry & Qattan Foundation, 2007); and two other

novels: Grains of Sugar (House of Poetry, 2004) and Threshold of Heavy

Spirit (Ogarit, 2011), as well as several children’s books. In 2005 she received the

Young Creative Writer Award by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, followed in

2006 with the Young Writers Award for Poetry from the A. M. Qattan

Foundation.

Her writing has featured in several international journals and magazines, and has

been translated into English, French, German, Swedish and Korean. More

recently, she has also turned to acting, with starring roles in Though I Know the

River Is Dry (2013), Love, Theft and Other Entanglements (2015) and Bab Ela'mod:

Damascus Gate (2015). Since 2013 Maya has worked as the director of the

Palestinian Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She currently lives in Jerusalem with her

husband and children.

Rights available:

World (ex USA)

Rights sold:

Penny Candy Books

(World English)

MAYA ABU-ALHAYYATThe Blue Pool of Questions

About the author

Fiction

About the book



Winner of the 2016 Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature

Severed connections and the longing for understanding are at the heart

of this moving set of stories. With spare, precise language recalling

Naipaul and Coetzee, yet vibrantly evocative as Vargas Llosa and

Bolano, these stories mark the debut of a strong new talent in the

burgeoning scene of English writing from Bangladesh.

'Anis Ahmed's debut collection tells the story of Dhaka from a provincial

outpost to a global mega-city, through the eyes of a few linked characters.

Following the thread of their lives from childhood through the blush of first

love, to the melancholy and disappointments of middle age, the stories

weave an intricate tapestry building hopes, lost childhoods, and the

possibilities of human connection. Vividly realised and intricately observed

[the book] is a poignant portrait of a city and the characters [who] live in the

wake of great change.'

Tahmima Anam, author of The Good Muslim

‘These stories reveal K. Anis Ahmed to be a writer of promise with a telling

eye for detail.' Shashi Tharoor, author of The Great Indian Novel

K. Anis Ahmed is a Bangladeshi writer based in Dhaka. He is co-founder of

Bengal Lights, Bangladesh’s most prominent English literary journal. He is the

author of Good Night, Mr Kissinger, a collection of short stories, and The

World in My Hands, his first novel.

Ahmed is co-founder of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, and

publisher of Dhaka Tribune. He is co-founder of the Dhaka Literary Festival,

contributes to international journals such as Newsweek/Daily Beast, Wall

Street Journal and World the ‘New Voices from Bangladesh’ Literature Today.

Ahmed co-curated section in the autumn 2013 edition of Granta magazine.

Rights available:

World (ex USA and

Bangladesh)

Rights sold:

Unnamed Press

(USA)

UPL (Bangladesh)

K. ANIS AHMEDGood Night Mr Kissinger: Short Stories

About the author

Fiction

About the book



Rights available:

World (ex India)

Rights sold:

Vintage, PRH

(India)

K. ANIS AHMEDThe World in My Hands: A Novel

About the author

Fiction

About the bookStruggling newspaper editor, Hissam, is finding it harder and harder to

pretend that believing in your work is just as satisfying as landing a big

promotion.

His old college friend, Kaiser, has fared considerably better as one of the

city's wealthiest property developers, who also happens to be married to

the woman of Hissam's dreams. Hissam's chance to strike it big presents

itself in the form of a military-backed Emergency that upends the country's

social order. Choosing to back different sides, Hissam and Kaiser find

themselves trading places in a way that changes their relationship, and their

lives, for ever.

'A gripping and thoughtful novel about personal loyalties in a world torn by

politics and violence‘

Tabish Khair

'Darkly funny. A strong new voice from Bangladesh.‘

Tamima Anam

K. Anis Ahmed is a Bangladeshi writer based in Dhaka. He is co-founder of

Bengal Lights, Bangladesh’s most prominent English literary journal. He is

the author of Good Night, Mr Kissinger, a collection of short stories, and The

World in My Hands, his first novel.

Ahmed is co-founder of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, and

publisher of Dhaka Tribune. He is co-founder of the Dhaka Literary Festival,

contributes to international journals such as Newsweek/Daily Beast, Wall

Street Journal and World Literature Today. Ahmed co-curated the ‘New

Voices from Bangladesh’ section in the autumn 2013 edition of Granta

magazine.



A novel of memories and wandering, A Greater Music blends riffs on music,

language and literature with a gut-punch of an emotional ending, establishing

Bae Suah as one of the most exciting novelists working today.

Near the beginning of A Greater Music, the narrator, a young Korean writer, falls

into an icy river in the Berlin suburbs, where she's been housesitting for her on-

off boyfriend, Joachim. This sets into motion a series of memories that move

between the hazily defined present and the period three years ago when she

first lived in Berlin. Throughout, the narrator's relationship with Joachim, a

rough-and-ready metalworker, is contrasted with her friendship with a woman

called M, an ultra-refined, music-loving German teacher who, it is suggested,

once became her lover.

Bae Suah, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Korean authors, has

published more than a dozen works and won several prestigious awards. She

has also translated several books from the German, including works by W. G.

Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her first book to appear in

English, Nowhere to be Found, was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize.

Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

Open Letter Books

(WEL)

BAE SUAHA Greater Music

About the author

Fiction

About the book



Translated by Deborah Smith -

Man Booker International

Prize-winning translator of

Han Kang's The Vegetarian.

'Bae Suah offers the chance to unknow—to see the everyday afresh and be

defamiliarized with what we believe we know—which is no small offering.'

Sophie Hughes, Music & Literature

The meeting between a group of emigrants and a mysterious, wandering actress

in an empty train station sets the stage for Recitation, a fragmentary yet lyrical

meditation on language, travel, and memory by South Korea's most prominent

contemporary female author. As the actress recounts the fascinating story of her

stateless existence, an unreliable narrator and the interruptions of her audience

challenge traditional notions of storytelling and identity.

Bae Suah, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Korean authors, has

published more than a dozen works and won several prestigious awards. She

has also translated several books from the German, including works by W. G.

Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her first book to appear in

English, Nowhere to be Found, was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize.

Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

Deep Vellum (WEL)

BAE SUAHRecitation

About the author

Fiction

About the book



Translated by Deborah Smith -

Man Booker International

Prize-winning translator of

Han Kang's The Vegetarian.

Rights available:

World (ex Italian and

English)

Rights sold:

Metropoli d’Asia

(Italian)

River Books

(English)

TEW BUNNAGCurtain of Rain

About the author

Fiction

About the bookTwo lives, fatefully interlinked; two sets of memories, in danger of being

lost.

Clare Stone’s past has suddenly caught up with her. When a long suppressed

memory comes vividly alive, she finds herself being pulled back to the place

of its origin: Bangkok.

There, she meets Tarrin Wandee, the writer whose book has unsettled her.

But have they met before, all those years ago, when she was young, idealistic

and dangerously naïve?

And so their stories unfold, in a steady rhythm between the past and the

present, fiction and reality, in relief against the pulsating backdrop of

Bangkok itself.

All our lives are linked; it’s just a question of how.

Atmospheric and moody, Curtain of Rain is a story of politics, power and

greed, and the search for meaning, and redemption.

Tew Bunnag comes from a prominent Thai family, graduated from the

University of Cambridge with a degree in Chinese and Economics, works in the

Bangkok slums with Father Joe, and divides his time between Thailand and

Spain. He is a Buddhist, a T'ai Chi and Meditation Master and a grief

counsellor who provides palliative care for the families of terminally ill

children.

• Fragile Days - Collection of short stories

• The Naga’s Journey – A novel

• After the Wave - Collection of short stories

• Time of the Lotus - An MBS bestseller, published in Spanish by Comanegra

Also available



Rights available:

World (ex Spain)

Rights sold:

Comenegra

(Spanish)

TEW BUNNAGThe Time of the Lotus

About the author

Fiction

About the book Set initially in a one-room shack in the Bangkok slums, this is a fable about

the search for nirvana in the modern world, about the meaning of life and

death, and how one cannot exist without the other.

When ten-year-old Siri's elder sister, Pi Nit dies from Dengue Fever, he blacks out

at the moment of her death. Unable to cry or grieve when he is roused, he is

befuddled and embarrassed by his conflicting emotions, and by the peace he saw

on his sister's face during her last moments. And when he feels elated, rather

than sad, at her cremation, he decides to bury his feelings deep inside, and focus

his energies on his education, and future, promising himself that he will move

himself and his mother away from the slums.

The years pass and he fulfils his promise: he and his mother live well, in a

wonderfully expensive modern house in the suburbs. He has more money than

he knows what to do with, and is constantly busy with work; however, his mother

is unhappy, not only because she misses her friends and their simpler way of life,

but also because she sees the sadness in her son's eyes, and the emptiness of the

way they live now.

It is only when Siri unpacks a box of keepsakes that he begins to contemplate the

meaning of his own life, come to terms with his emotions, and with the death of

his sister, and prompts him to reject the material world. What did he find

amongst the keepsakes? The framed drawing of a lotus flower his sister had

made so many years ago.

Tew Bunnag comes from a prominent Thai family, graduated from the University

of Cambridge with a degree in Chinese and Economics, works in the Bangkok

slums with Father Joe, and divides his time between Thailand and Spain. He is a

Buddhist, a T'ai Chi and Meditation Master and a grief counsellor who provides

palliative care for the families of terminally ill children.

▪ Fragile Days - Collection of short stories

▪ The Naga’s Journey – A novel

▪ After the Wave - Collection of short stories

▪ Curtain of Rain – A novel, to be published in Italian by Metropoli d’Asia and

in English by River Books in 2014

Also available



The 120,000 copy (and counting) bestselling novel from one of South Korea's

best-loved writers.

THE WHALE is a masterpiece of modern fiction: literary, fantasmagorically

Fellini-esque in scope and scale - a mix of farce, Nietzsche-esque fable and

fantasy, like Gabriel Garcia Marqeuz, on shrooms.

A cross between The Master and Margarita and The Grand Budapest Hotel,

calling to mind also Albert Camus' The Fall, this allegorical satire reimagines

the Sisyphean myth, and the search for meaning and the salvation of the soul

in the modern world. And is there any such thing, as meaning and salvation,

and the soul...

Told in three parts, as a narrative that circles back on itself...and with a pointed

social critique nestled hidden and subtle in the background, obliquely

portraying a society under the influence of a military dictatorship, and a country

changing from a pre-modern to a postmodern society. Add to this a dash of

irony, and laugh out loud humour and it becomes a masterpiece of social and

political criticism.

CHEON MYEONG-KWAN is one of the most famous and beloved novelists in

South Korea whose award-winning novels have been published in various

languages around the world. A former screenwriter, he debuted with a short

story, Frank and I, which earned the prestigious Munhakdongnae New Writer

Award (2003). His first novel, The Whale, received the Munhakdongnae Award

for Best Novel in 2004. His novels including The Whale and Modern Family, have

been translated into several languages including Chinese, English, French, Thai,

Russian and Vietnamese.

Rights available: World (ex Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Thai)

Rights sold: Chongquing (Chinese) Actes Sud (French) Text (Russian) Nanmee (Thai) Shobunsa (Japan)

CHEON MYEONG-KWANThe Whale

About the author

Fiction

About the book



Rights available:

World (ex Chinese)

Acting as sub-agent

for the Grayhawk

Literary Agency,

Taiwan

SHARON CHUNGSilent Truths: A Novel of Hong Kong

About the author

Fiction

About the book

Sharon Chung (1962- ) was born in Guangzhou but grew up in Hong Kong.

Chung started writing when she was a teenager and her first novel, A Pinwheel

without Wind, was published in 1981 when she was only 18, and became an

overnight sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Taiwan and

Hong Kong. Chung went on to write several collections of stories and poems.

After graduating from the University of Michigan with a major in Film Studies,

she immigrated to Australia. She received a two-year fellowship grant from the

Australia Council of Art, with which she wrote Silent Truths.

She eventually returned to Hong Kong. In the decade since she has worked as

translator and screenwriter and resurfaced in 2008 with the new edition of

Pinwheel and, later, a collection of early essays. She now lives in San Francisco

and is working on her next novel.

Set in Hong Kong during the turbulent years before the 1997 handover,

Silent Truths is a haunting family saga and a dark retelling of the classic

Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. It is the story of an idealistic

young man, Yu Yat-Ping, and his complicated entanglement with the

family of jewelry tycoon Wong King-Lok.

Silent Truths is a seductive blend of Gothic romance, murder mystery,

and family saga, written in exquisite prose and full of unpredictable twists. This

yet-to-be-discovered classic, a la The Leopard, will appeal to readers who

made international bestsellers of Janice Lee’s The Piano Teacher and Kate

Morton’s The House at Riverton.

First published in 1996, it is Hong Kong writer Sharon Chung’s second

novel, after which she completely disappeared from the literary scene for

more than a decade.



Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

Little Brown/Hachette

(WEL)

COLIN FALCONERLucifer Falls

About the author

Fiction

About the bookSo many ways you could die.

He knows every one of them...

A priest is found crucified in a derelict North London chapel.

'This is one for the ages,' DI Charlie George tells his squad next morning as they

gather in the Incident Room at the Essex Road nick.

Their usual round is sorting cases of domestic violence, or stabbings on the

estates.

When the case doesn’t get sorted, everyone gets nervous. And with good

reason: it’s about to get a lot worse.

On Christmas night, a cop is found buried up to his neck on Hampstead Heath.

He’s been stoned to death. Are the two murders related? Charlie's bosses don't

want to believe it.

Charlie journeys into the city’s cold underbelly to try and find an answer to the

madness, before anyone else dies a martyr’s death …

Colin Falconer has been a novelist for over 25 years and published over 40

books. His work has sold into translation in 23 countries. He travels regularly to

research his novels and his quest for authenticity has led him to run with the

bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black witches across

Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed in a riot in La

Paz. He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the camino in Spain.

His fiction has been compared to that of Ken Follett, books with romance and

high adventure, intricately researched, and drawn from many periods of history.www.asialiteraryagency.org


Rights available: World (ex Korean)

Rights sold: Lupe (Korean)

TIM FITTSThe Soju Club

About the author

Fiction

About the book Loosely inspired by the classic Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante. The

Soju Club’s picaresque brilliance centres around narrator Wonho, a famous

author, his alcoholic father and a madcap, dysfunctional family life. When city-

living Wonho receives a call from his brother from their coastal hometown in

Geojedo, an island located on the peninsula’s southern coast, he is persuaded

to return to dissuade his parents from divorcing. Instead, he ends up involved

in his father’s last fishing trip, with his father’s two drinking buddies.

This is an ‘American author’s Korean novel about 100% real Korea’, yet its

appeal is universal, and its sensibility alternates between laugh out loud funny

and stop-you-in-your tracks sad, with themes such as the relationships

between fathers and sons, food and drink, and a writer’s growing ego.

Tim Fitts teaches in the Liberal Arts Department of the Curtis Institute of

Music and serves on the editorial staff of thePainted Bride Quarterly. His

novel,The Soju Club, was translated into Korean and published in 2016

by Munhakdongne; his newest collection of short stories, Hypothermia, has

debuted recently in English with Madhat Press, followed by another collection,

Go Home and Cry for Yourselves, published by Xavier Review Press.

Fitts’s stories have been published by a variety of prestigious publishers

including Granta, Day One, Shenandoah,The Baltimore Review, CutBank,

among others. His photography has been featured as cover art for the New

England Review, the American Literary Review and is exhibited at the Thomas

Deans Gallery in Atlanta. He has held solo exhibitions at Kwanhoon Galleries in

Seoul, Suwon University, as well as the Kaywon School of Art and Design. He

lives and works in Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife and two children.



Rights available:

World

MELANIE GRABOWSKICrooked Little Smile

About the author

Fiction

About the book Set in England and Australia, Crooked Little Smile tells the story of young

Claire, caught between two worlds: the past and the present. Told from the

point of view of Claire as a primary-school-aged girl in England, and from the

teenage Claire, living in Australia but looking back. As she struggles to grow

up, to make friends in her new country, and to become a woman, she realises

that her troubles fitting in are not just about being in an unfamiliar, often

hostile place but also about the fact of the memories that haunt.

As she fights with herself to push them away they fight back, invading her

dreams and waking sensibility. She’s protecting herself from feeling hurt and

ashamed, yes, but is there someone else she is protecting? And if there’s

someone to blame – who is it?

Crooked Little Smile is an evocative coming-of-age story of redemption and

forgiveness, and the power of a young woman to overcome the painful

memories in her past. This is a tour-de-force debut from an award-winning

writer now based in the UK.

Melanie Grabowski is fascinated with human emotion and behaviour, child

psychology in particular, an interest that led her to a BA in Psychology and

Writing. Having worked with children in various capacities for almost 30 years,

Melanie is also a Montessori-trained education assistant and a passionate

advocate for the rights of the child.

Melanie’s inspiration for writing lies in the emotion found in everyday stories,

particularly from the perspectives of those who struggle to be heard. Her short

stories have been awarded or shortlisted in several Australian and

international literary competitions.

She has lived and worked in Ireland and Austria, as well as the two countries

she calls home - Australia and England.



Rights available:

World (ex USA, French

and Korean)

Rights sold:

Decrescenzo (French)

USA (Graywolf)

UK/Comm (Tilted Axis)

HAN YUJOOThe Impossible Fairy Tale

About the author

Fiction

About the book 'You visited me like a dream.‘

The child who stepped out of the story opened the door and came in. This is

either impossible or not impossible.

Impossible Fairytale is nothing less than a metafiction masterpiece, from

THE Bright Young Thing of Korean Literature, Han Yujoo.

Korean fiction in the new millennium is more imaginative than ever

before, and no Korean writer is more imaginative than Han Yujoo.

"Han Yujoo shows us what we wish we didn't have to see, what we wish we'd

never seen, and what we think we see clearly but don't. She plumbs the depths

of language to excavate the relationship of author to character, transforming a

story about the fragility of innocence and the power of memory into an

unsettling and exquisite meditation on art and cruelty. The Impossible Fairy

Tale is a new kind of literary horror, as intellectual as it is transfixing."—Sarah

Gerard, author of Binary Star

Shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize 2018

‘A debut novel [that] sketches the barbaric politics of elementary school

with terrifying clarity. The narrative turn is both exuberantly postmodern and in

dead earnest, questioning the use of suffering as an aesthetic device’

New Yorker

‘a bold and aesthetically ambitious debut, pleasingly discomfiting and highly

memorable’ TLS

Han Yujoo debuted in 2003 with her short story To the Moon, which won

Literature and Society's New Writers Award. Impossible Fairytale, has

recently been published by Moonji, Korea, which has also published her

three collections of short stories: To the Moon, Book of Ice and My Left Hand

the King My Right Hand the King's Scribe.

Yujoo read German literature at Seoul National University, and has

translated the works of Geoff Dyer and Michael Ondaatje into Korean. She

won the prestigious Hankook Ilbo Literary Award in 2009 and currently

teaches at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.



Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

Tara Books (English)

AYESHA HEBLEThird Person Singular

About the author

Fiction

About the book Third Person Singular, the most wonderful debut from Ayesha Heble, who

was shortlisted for the 2013 Tibor Jones Prize with this novel – a sublimely

perceptive tale of solipsism, self-involvement and, eventually, self-

awareness and redemption.

Third Person Singular is a comedy of manners and semantic manipulation

set on a fictitious university campus somewhere in Delhi.

When an ambitious young reporter misquotes a university professor in an effort

to make the headlines, and a name for herself, all hell breaks loose. Her

question, only tangentially related to the interview topic – the decline of the

Indian publishing industry – draws the professor of sociology into commenting

on whether he thinks The Satanic Verses should be banned, or not. Students

riot, buses are burned and classes suspended – not only because of the

disruption caused by the controversy but also because there aren’t enough

qualified teachers available, due to a pending lawsuit brought against the

university by an aggrieved former faculty member.

Everyone is caught in suspended animation – no one moves forward, no one

looks back. No one sees the other side of the story. Instead, they all focus only

on their own self-interested agendas.

‘Whenever an issue arose with diametrically opposing stands taken, there

usually was a third position, if only someone had the courage to express it.

Instead, people felt obliged to take sides, you were either for or else you were

against, and somewhere in the middle the truth escaped. There was no truth;

only positions…’

Ayesha Heble, herself a university English lecturer, gives

us dialogue that is believable but at the same time archly

ironic, with narrative interludes worthy of Oscar Wilde

and characters who entertain us with their faults and

failings.Shortlisted for the 2013

Tibor Jones South Asia Prize.www.asialiteraryagency.org


Rights available: World (ex UK/Comm)

Rights sold: Michael Joseph/PRH (UK/Comm)

CHRIS LARRSONDeception Island

About the author(the author writes using a

pseudonym)

Fiction

About the book It all begins with a photograph: a black line in the distance, and an old

man with the presence of mind to recognise that something may be

seriously untoward.

Situation 1: who'd believe him?

Situation 2: someone does - someone very high up, cloistered behind the

scenes.

Situation 3: the photograph was taken by a dead man, in a DMZ.

Jack McCulloch is woken by his boss to co-ordinate the recon; he will be in

charge of a mission in an off-limits territory guarded by treaty.

It isn’t going to be easy; and can only be a Deep Black operation.

Jack knows the team he needs to call in – The Element, an elite, top-secret unit

of Special Forces and Security Services agents. He knows, too, the man he

wants to lead it: Jack McCulloch, the fast-talking, hard-fighting Scottish SF

agent he’d trust with his life.

In the vein of Kolymsky Heights meets Riddle of the Sands and I Am Pilgrim, this

debut from writing team Christian Larsson* and Tom Bromley - of the Faber

Academy - will be the first in a series launching these writers into becoming

household names as recognisable Le Carre and Follett.

Chris Larsson was born in London in 1973, he joined the Army Cadet Force and

Air Training Corps whilst at school and later studied Politics, History and English

at university. After graduating he went to Oman to do some expeditionary and

marine training, returning to the UK and passing the aircrew selection tests at

RAF Cranwell, gaining a fast-jet pass.

Since then Chris has spent a number of years in the military in both aviation and

signals roles, working in a technical capacity on both civilian and military

information and aviation systems. A qualified pilot, diver and trauma medic, he

lives in the home counties but spends his spare time in Snowdonia and enjoys

shooting, skiing, flying and computing, as well as hill-walking and foreign affairs.www.asialiteraryagency.org


Rights available:

World (ex Australia)

JAMES LEEGhostworks

Fiction

About the books and

the author

'ASIA'S MOST POPULAR CHILDREN'S AUTHOR' James Lee's Mr Midnight and Mr

Mystery scary stories have captivated young readers in Asia since 1988, with over 3

million copies sold to date and written as a series to provide children in the region

with characters and stories they could identify with, using Asian names and

backdrops.

James's new series, GHOSTWORKS, has already reprinted in the first few months after

publication in Australia by the up and coming indie press, XOUM. Aimed at the widest

possible demographic and with an appeal as fun, popular and collectible as his first

two mega-selling series.

GHOSTWORKS is now on submission to publishers in UK and USA.

James, an Australian with Singapore Permanent Residency, was a voice actor and

advertising agency creative director before becoming a writer. He received the

inaugural Australian Arts in Asia Award for Literature in 2013.

The Asia Literary Agency is proud to represent James Lee's GHOSTWORKS on behalf

of XOUM.



Rights available:

World*

*NB: Originally

self-published in

January 2013

MING LIUOur Man in China

About the author

Fiction

About the book Dangerous, dark, dissolute, Our Man in China is the Wall Street meets

Bonfire of the Vanities of the twenty first century...

When American-Born-Chinese Eric Chen returns to China, he believes he's

returning to the motherland. A junior vice president at Goldberg Brothers, he's

working overtime to make a name for himself... but he soon realises he's in over

his head, because being an ABC is a distinct disadvantage in the new China,

where the Chinese are making up the rules, and then discarding them, as they

go along.

Determined to win a takeover deal that sees him shuttle between Shanghai,

Beijing, Hong Kong and New York, Eric meets all those others profiting from the

world's next superpower: the troubled playboy son of Hong Kong's richest

tycoon, a hedonistic, arrogant boss, and Joanna, another ABC desperate to

belong. Cultural assimilation and confusion, temptation and greed and

seduction abound in this new China, where it's easy fail, and more difficult to

succeed -- especially if you're an outsider.

What are the barriers and boundaries when you don't even know who you are,

or where you came from, or where your place in the world should be?

Ming Liu is a journalist who contributes to the Financial Times, China

International Business, V magazine and the Asia Literary Review. She has also

reported for the NBC Today show.

Born in the United States, she moved to Asia at the age of six, and spent a

peripatetic childhood in China, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, eventually

returning to the US to study sociology and economics at Wellesley College.

In 2011, she received her masters in creative writing from the University of

Manchester. She divides her time between London and Beijing.

Ming Liu is one of the most

talented young writers

I've ever had the privilege

to teach.

M J Hyland, author of

How the Light Gets In



Rights available:

World (ex USA)

Rights sold:

Crown Books for

Young Readers/PRH

(WEL)

LEZA LOWITZUp from the Sea

About the author

Fiction

About the book When a 140-foot wave swallows up half your village, how do you manage to

stay whole?

That’s the question 14-year old bi-racial Kai Takamoto asks himself after a tsunami

sweeps over his sleepy seaside town, killing his mother and grandparents.

Setting out to find his father, who’d left years before, Kai decides to leave the village

for good. But when his search is a disappointment and a local organiser offers a trip

to New York to meet kids who’ve lost family in 9-11, Kai reconsiders.

Visiting Ground Zero on its tenth anniversary, Kai realises the only way to make

something good come out of the disaster back home is to return there, and help

rebuild his town.

Rekindling his childhood dream of playing football, he returns to the coast, forms a

local team, and collects money for a brand-new pitch. Word spreads of the town’s

efforts and Kai’s father, who belatedly learns of the news, travels to Japan to

reconnect with his son.

Drawing loosely on the Japanese poetic form of haibun, Up from the Sea is a novel

in verse for young adults in the tradition of Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust and Jame

Richards’s Three Rivers Rising.

Leza Lowitz lives in Tokyo with her husband, the writer and translator, Shogo

Oketani, and their eight-year-old son.

She has been running her own yoga studio there for a decade, and travels around

Japan and Asia to teach yoga, and write. Her debut YA novel, Jet Black and the Ninja

Wind (first in a trilogy and written with Oketani) won the APALA award for YA in

2013. She is also a translator and a bestselling poet. Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By,

has been translated into four languages and is one of Amazon’s top-selling poetry

books.

Also available: Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras, published

in 2015 by Stone Bridge Press.www.asialiteraryagency.org


Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

Monsoon Books

(English)

ROSIE MILNE

About the author

Fiction

About the bookSet in London, Java, Sumatra and Singapore, against the backdrop of the

Napoleonic Wars – this story takes the form of two diaries, first Olivia’s

and then Sophia’s.

Raffles' two wives were both extraordinary women: Olivia was a raffish beauty

who was ten years older than him; Sophia was the first white woman to venture

into the Sumatran interior.

Raffles’ life reads like fiction. He was born into the London respectable poor,

but rose to count royals amongst his friends. He was at constant odds with his

superiors in The East India Company, yet on their behalf he founded Singapore.

Three of his and Sophia’s children died in Sumatra. When the grieving parents

were sailing home to England, their ship sank, and they lost all their

possessions - they barely escaped with their lives.

Back in London, Raffles was nearly bankrupted through a combination of The

East India Company’s meanness, and the effect on his investments of the

financial panic of 1825. Before he died he helped found London Zoo. His statue

is in Westminster Abbey. There are obvious comparisons between Raffles’ time

and ours. This is a novel about an early period of globalisation and about the

forerunners of modern expats – and of expat wives.

'Superb... beautifully written, moving, entertaining and fascinating'

Bookish Asia

Rosie Milne was a book editor in London before she moved to New York and

wrote her first novel How to Change Your Life, about an editor of self-help

books who tries to follow the advice in a self-help book.

She then moved to Hong Kong, where she wrote her second novel, Holding the

Baby, about the way motherhood turns women’s lives upside down, and where

she was a columnist for The South China Morning Post.

She then moved to Singapore, set up the very popular Asian Books Blog, and

now contributes to the UK Telegraph.

Olivia & Sophia:The Adventures of Sir

Thomas Stamford Raffles,

the Remarkable Founder

of Singapore, As Seen

through the Eyes of

His Two Wives



Rights available:

World (ex UK/Comm

and Indonesian)

Rights sold:

Harvill Secker

(UK/Comm)

Gramedia (Indonesian)

INTAN PARAMADITHAApple & Knife

About the author

Fiction

About the bookIntan Paramaditha’s long-awaited English debut, announcing herself to the

West as a startling and provocative new voice. Inspired by horror fiction, myths

and fairy tales, Apple and Knife is an unsettling ride that swerves to the

supernatural, exploring the danger and power of occupying a female body.

These short fictions, set in the Indonesian every day – in corporate boardrooms,

in shanty towns, on dangdut stages – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just

beneath the surface. This is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men

and women alike are arbiters of fear, where revenge is sometimes sweetest

when delivered from the grave and where taboos, inversions, sex and death all

come together in a heady, intoxicating mix full of pointed critiques and bloody

mutilations.

For admirers of Angela Carter, Mary Shelly, Charlotte Wood, Margaret Atwood,

Budi Darma, and Mariana Enríquez.

‘Intan Paramaditha, who mixes fairy tales and gothic ghost stories with feminist

and political issues, shakes up her readers, showing that her fiction is not

beholden to a single interpretation. Her short stories reveal that the most

terrifying thing in life is not one of the supernatural ghosts that populate her

work, but human prejudice. As far as I’m concerned, only writers of genius are

able to convey a layered and nuanced world, and Intan is one of them.’

Eka Kurniawan, internationally acclaimed author of Beauty is a

Wound and Man Tiger, Man Booker International Prize 2016 finalist

Intan Paramaditha is an Indonesian fiction writer and an academic based in

Sydney. Her collection of short stories, Apple and Knife, was translated into

English by Stephen J. Epstein and published in March 2018 by Brow Books. She

has published a choose-your-own adventure novel on travel and

displacement, Gentayangan (The Wandering), and two collections of short

stories: Sihir Perempuan (Black Magic Woman), shortlisted for the Khatulistiwa

Literary Award, and Kumpulan Budak Setan (The Devil’s Slaves Club, with Eka

Kurniawan and Ugoran Prasad). Intan was the winner of Kompas Best Short

Story Award in 2013, and her novel Gentayangan was selected as Tempo Best

Literary Work for Prose Fiction in 2017. She holds a PhD from New York

University and teaches Media and Film Studies at Macquarie University.

Also available – Gentayangan (The Wandering: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

Novel).



© U

go

ran

Pra

sad

Rights available:

World

WARWICK WOODHOUSEThe Verglas File

About the author

Fiction

About the book An international crime-thriller set in London and Germany, The Verglas File is

the story of the race to discover the Verglas hoard. Verglas is the code name

of the project run by a special team of SS who stole the Holy Roman Empire

artefacts from the Hofberg museum in Vienna in 1938, hid them, and

Himmler’s body, which have never been found. It is also the name of the file

containing the secret of the operation.

Starting during the reign of the Nazis in Germany, The Verglas File moves to

the present day.

When British journalist and ex-soldier, Jack Cunningham, and his friend, Emma

Swift, are given clues to the location of the file by the dying ex-leader of the

Verglas team (Emma’s surrogate father) they are unaware that the file is

sought by the Totenkopf, a neo-Nazi organisation made up of ex members of

the SS and their progeny. The Totenkopf have infiltrated all levels of German

government, industry, the armed forces and intelligence services; they need

the file to create the Fourth Reich.

A Russian intelligence team also wants the file. As part of war reparations the

German government presented a replica of the Amber Room to Putin, but the

Russians have never stopped searching for the real thing.

Intertwined with Nazi history and legend, Verglas is a pacy thriller packed with

violence, pursuit, betrayal, conspiracy and intrigue, and a bloody denouement.

Who will win, who will survive, and what are the consequences of the file being

discovered, if it ever were?

Warwick Woodhouse was a member of the British Armed forces and saw

active service in Northern Ireland, Belize, the Oman, and the Falklands.



PRIYA’S SHAKTI BOOK PROPOSAL‘A new superhero has arisen in India in the wake of the brutal gang rape on a Delhi

bus: Priya, a mortal woman who is raped herself, but who fights back against

sexual violence with the help of the goddess Parvati and a tiger.’ Guardian

‘The first Indian comic book of its kind – not only confronting readers with the

sensitive issue of sexual violence, but also engaging young people through its

innovative use of augmented reality technology.’ Reuters

SYNOPSIS

A series of augmented-reality comic books following the journey of Priya, a young

Indian woman from a rural village forced to abandon her studies to care for her

family. One day, while out running errands, she is raped by a group of local men,

including someone she knows. When she returns home, her family blames her for

what happened. Ostracized, she flees to the forest where she is stalked by a wild

tiger. She prays for help from one of her idols, the Goddess Parvati. She hears

Priya’s prayers and is horrified to learn of the sexual violence faced regularly by

women on Earth. Determined to change this disturbing reality, Parvati awakens the

courage within Priya to break her silence and refuse to bear her assault in silence –

transforming Priya into a modern-day superhero, becoming at once so strong that

she tames the tiger stalking her, she rides atop this tiger back to her village,

gaining the respect of those who had shamed her.

Newly emboldened and fearless, Priya and her tiger (now named Sahas) travel

across India like Gandhi himself singing a powerful mantra that moves men and

women to stand against sexual violence, creating solidarity amongst survivors of

sexual assault.

‘Priya may have a bad-ass tiger for a companion and a goddess who has her back, but

it is Priya’s belief in herself and hope for a better world that is truly her superpower.’

SYFY Wire

Not your typical superhero, Priya’s strength is rooted in the power of an idea.

Although she rides a tiger, she has no other super power – her conviction and ability

to persuade others make her more powerful than Superman or Wonder Woman. Priya

is simply an ordinary girl who has accessed the power living inside us all, hidden by

our fears.

Priya’s World:

Priya lives in a mythological India, pastoral and ancient like the one in stories of Gitas

but populated by humans, nature spirits and creatures from the vast breadth of Indian

folklore. And like modern India itself, Priya’s world is not represented by a single

religion or ethnic group, but by a tapestry woven over thousands of years from co-

existing cultures.

Inspiration:

The comic-book series was inspired by the much-publicized 2012 gang rape on a New

Delhi bus, which elicited an enormous public outcry, particularly from young adults

and teenagers of all genders. Inspiring many to call for a cultural shift, the case

demanded a challenge of the longheld patriarchal views of the role of women in

modern society.

Why Now?

In the wake of the recent school shootings in Florida and the speeches by its surviving

students, it is clear that the new world order, in Florida or India or anywhere, will be

formed by the courageous voices of the young, one at a time, until this chorus reaches

a crescendo. Priya and her story are a part of this movement.

The first edition of Priya’s Shakti was launched in 2014, and since then she has become

a symbol of solidarity in the streets of India and on social media, giving a face to a

growing movement of young Indians pushing for gender equality in daily life. Ram

Devineni and Dan Goldman, creators of this series, were honored by UN Women in

2015 as ‘gender-equality champions’.

“Priya named gender equality champion.”

Background on Funding & Success: The first volume in the series – Priya’s Shakti – was initially funded by the Tribeca Film

Institute, Ms. Foundation, and by the Ford Foundation. Launched at the Mumbai

Comic and Film Convention in December 2014, Mumbai Week called it ‘the most

anticipated comic book release of the event’. Priya became an overnight viral

sensation generating over 700 news stories worldwide. Because the series began as

a charitable enterprise, 30,000 copies were printed and distributed for free in schools,

to NGOs and at festivals and comic-book conventions. It has been downloaded, in its

original form, over 500,000 times and over 26 million people have seen or read the

series in its many platforms and mediums from comic books, exhibitions and street

art.

Due in part to its success, Priya’s journey continued with Priya’s Mirror, in which she

defends and inspires survivors of acid attacks. Written in collaboration with true-life

survivors of acid violence who were incorporated into the book as characters, Priya’s

Mirror was the first comic book to be funded by the World Bank. It premiered in

October 2016 with an augmented reality exhibition at Lincoln Center as part of

the New York Film Festival. Its release went viral again with major features on BBC, a

full program on Al-Jazeera, the cover of Newsweek, and named by Fast Company as

one of the top creative projects of 2017. A portion of the comic book series’ proceeds

and printed editions have gone to a variety of NGOs for use in schools and

community centers to bring media awareness to gender-based violence issues.

Our main NGO partner for book 3, Priya and the Lost Girls, which focuses on sex

trafficking, (details below) is Apne Aap Women Worldwide.

Augmented-Reality: ‘The first Indian comic book of its kind – not only confronting readers with the

sensitive issue of sexual violence, but also engaging young people through its

innovative use of augmented reality technology.’ Reuters

One of the Priya’s key features is an invisible layer of Augmented Reality (AR) on

every single page that can be accessed by scanning the book with a mobile app to

reveal animation, interactive calls-to-action, and audio/video clips of the real-life

stories that went into the creation of the series. All the AR content is evergreen, as it

can be refreshed with new content long after the book has been printed. Priya was

one of the first publications to use AR in India, innovative in its integration of books,

exhibitions and public art for a social cause.

Our gallery shows and street art have been seen by over 5 million people with

exhibitions at Lincoln Center, ARTBO in Bogota, Myriad Festival in Australia,

Crossroads in Beijing, and SXSW Interactive.

A full list is available at http://www.priyashakti.com/events/

Rights available:

World (ex USA)

Rights sold:

Zephyr Press (WEL)

KO KO THETTthe burden of being burmese

About the author

Poetry

About the book 'The Burden of Being Burmese is a rare case of a poetry book that’s been

genuinely long awaited. Thett has been publishing poetry for almost twenty

years now in many prestigious outlets – and the cover carries an endorsement

from among others, the great experimentalist, John Ashberry, who describes

the book as being “brilliantly off-kilter” and a “probably reliable guide to a

virtually unknown kingdom.”

This can only be interpreted as high praise from the high priest of American

poetry and in turn a nod to Thett’s own modernist techniques; titles in lower

case, list poems, inversions, ellipsis and an avoidance of the lyric voice but at

the same time thoroughly engaging. The book is a kaleidoscopic journey

through the mostly urban and rural landscapes that make up modern Burma; a

road movie in which he observes with passionate indignation, eschewing

sentimentality and invariably casting a cold eye.‘

Joe Woods, poet and former Director of Poetry Ireland

'The Burden of Being Burmese displays an extraordinary fertile and

imagination—one that will both delight and disturb American readers.'

Marjorie Perloff

'This is a powerful collection of Burmese poems in English, poems that were

conceived in Burmese but first written down in English: thus not exactly

translations.'

Anna Allott

ko ko thett is a poet by choice and Burmese by chance. He is the translator,

curator and co-editor of the seminal, PEN Award-winning poetry anthology,

Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets (ARC, 2012; Northern Illinois

University Press, 2013). ko ko thett, who has spent most of his life moving about

inside and outside Burma, is currently studying for his masters degree, reading

cultures and development studies at the University of Leuven. In 2016 he will be

at the Iowa Writers Workshop.



Non-Fiction



Michael Breen The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation

Michael Buckley Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction

of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to

the Deltas of Asia

Anna Chittenden Lost Guides: Bali

He Jiahong Back from the Dead: Wrongful Convictions and

Criminal Justice in China

Karoline Kan Under Red Skies: A Personal History of Modern

China

Esther Kofod The Libyan

Hyeonseo Lee The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean

Defector’s Story

Henry Lin The 100-Pound Gangster

Leza Lowitz Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8

Chakras

Hannah Lucinda Smith Two Tribes: Travels through Turkey’s Personality

Cults

Victor Mallet River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and

India’s Future

Phyllis McDuff A Story Dreamt Long Ago

Michael McInnes Homo Passiens: Man the Footballer

Jonathan Miller Duterte Harry: Fire and Fury in the Philippines

Mark Mobius The Inflation Myth

Sandra Navidi $uper-Hubs: How the Financial Elite and Their

Networks Rule Our World

Dreux Richard Every Human Intention: Japan in the New

Century

Keane Shum Selective Preservation

Michael Vatikiotis Blood & Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern

Southeast Asia

Patrick Winn Hello, Shadowlands: Inside Southeast Asia’s

Organized Crime Wave

The rise of South Korea was one of the most unexpected and inspirational

developments of the latter part of the twentieth century. A few decades

ago, the Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one

generation they came out of the fields and into Silicon Valley.

“If someone is going to live in Korea or do business with the Koreans, this is

certainly the book to read. It gives informative and deep introduction to this

fascinating (and not well-known) country, and, in addition, it is an engaging

read.” Andrei Lankov, author of The Dawn of Modern Korea

This updated and completely revised version of Michael Breen's hugely

popular and groundbreaking, The Koreans, provides an in-depth portrait of the

country and its people, told by a writer who has lived and worked in the country

for over two decades.

Rights available:

World (ex English,

Chinese and Korean)

Rights sold:

Thomas Dunne

(USA/Canada)

Rider Books

(UK/Comm)

Linking Books

(Chinese)

Sille Books (Korean)

MICHAEL BREENThe New Koreans: The Story of a Nation

About the author

About the book


Asia Literary Agency Non-Fiction

Michael Breen has lived in South Korea for thirty years. He served for many years

as Seoul correspondent for the Guardian and The Washington Times. He now runs

his own public relations and consultancy firm in Seoul, and frequently writes

essays, commentaries and features for the local

media.

He is the author of Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader and is currently

working on a biography of the controversial figure, Reverend Moon, founder of

the Unification Church.

"As Alexis de Tocqueville did with Americans of the 1830s, Michael Breen

probes 21st century Koreans to the very core of their being...'

Bradley Martin, author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader.

With a preface by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, this new book, a

disaster guide to the environmental crisis looming in Tibet, comes

to us from the journalist who co-wrote the first ever guidebook to Tibet in

1986 for Lonely Planet.

Meltdown in Tibet totally blows the lid off what the Chinese have been doing to

secure access and control of water throughout most of Asia, including

completely defiling the most holy of holy lakes in Tibet.

Oil? That's yesterday's news. The repercussions of what Michael unveils are

simply shocking.

The Chinese are, in effect, destroying holy sites in Tibet just as the Taliban

destroyed ancient relics in Afghanistan. This is all completely under the radar,

very few people know about this top-secret campaign that implicates the West,

also, as they have been supplying the machinery to make this happen.

Tibetans have experienced waves of genocide since the 1950s. Now they are

facing ecocide – the reckless destruction of their fragile high-altitude

environment.

With never before seen photographs and original detailed maps, Meltdown will

show readers the ruthless realities threatening Tibet, the rest of South-East Asia

and the world.

MICHAEL BUCKLEYMeltdown in Tibet:

China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia

About the author

About the book



Rights available:

World (ex USA)

Rights sold:

Palgrave Macmillan

(WEL)

Michael Buckley is a travel writer and photographer who has travelled

extensively throughout South-East Asia.

He is author or co-author of ten books about Asian and Himalayan travel,

including Eccentric Explorers, a biography-based book about ten wacky

adventurers to the Tibetan plateau; Shangri-La: A Travel Guide to the

Himalayan Dream; a guidebook to Indochina titled Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos;

Tibet: the Bradt Travel Guide, and Heartlands: Travels in the Tibetan World.

Michael has contributed to a wide variety of magazines and newspapers

including the Guardian, BBC Wildlife and TIME magazine.

“This book should be

part of a wake-up call

to the international

community and to

China.”

His Holiness the

Dalai Lama

What is Lost Guides: Offbeat travel & lifestyle guides for Asia and beyond.

Who should use it: Created for those interested in experiences rather than

expenses, Lost Guides caters for today’s traveller who is value-conscious, and who

has an eye for quality, design and authenticity.

The mission: ‘Empowering people to have authentic and inspiring travel

experiences’.

What’s the story: It comes as no surprise that we are truly passionate about

travelling, but we became tired of having to go to great lengths to retrieve useful

information about where we plan to visit. After despairing at the lack of trustworthy,

informative, and concise information online, Lost Guides was born.

Lost Guides is all about discovering those special places around the world, ones that

you don’t see or find unless someone lets you into the secret. Our guides are

designed to be like having your best friend showing you around their favourite local

hotspots, incluidng shops, bars, restaurants, cafes and ateliers. Aimed at the value-

conscious traveller, we know most of you don’t want to spend a month’s rent on a

night in a hotel, nor do you want to cosy up in a dorm room of a hostel. Lost

Guides show you the hidden gems in between.

Anna Chittenden worked in advertising and marketing in London before moving to

Singapore in 2014. Frustrated by the lack of reliable and trustworthy sources of

travel information, she founded the website thelostguides.com to share curated

travel guides for Asia. Talking to today’s millennial traveller – Lost Guides speaks to

the ‘stylish nomad’, those with an interest in experience rather than expense and an

eye for quality, design and authenticity.

In 2015 and via a successful crowd-funding campaign she launched Lost Guides –

Bali, a lifestyle-travel guide featuring unique, stylish and offbeat recommendations.

She is now working on her second book in the series: Lost Guides – Singapore.

Anna and Lost Guides have been featured in Conde Nast Traveller (UK & US)

Travel & Leisure Asia, Skyscanner, World Travel Magazine, Fathom and

Honeycombers.

Rights available:

World

ANN CHITTENDEN Lost Guides: Bali

About the author

Non-Fiction

About the book



http://thelostguides.com/

Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

University of Hawaii

Press (WEL)

HE JIAHONGBack from the Dead: Wrongful Convictions and Criminal

Justice in China

About the author

About the book



China's party-run courts have one of the highest conviction rates in the world, with

forced confessions remaining a central feature. Despite recent prohibitions on

evidence obtained through coercion or torture, forced confessions continue to

undermine the Chinese judicial system.

• Recounting some harrowing cases of wrongful conviction, acclaimed legal

scholar and novelist He Jiahong analyses many problems in China's justice

system.

• Surveys the organisation and procedure of criminal investigation, the lawyering

system for criminal defense, the public prosecution system, trial proceedings, as

well as criminal punishments and appeals.

• Highlights the frequent causes of wrongful convictions.

• Provides updated information about recent changes and reforms as well as the

many challenges of the criminal justice system in China.

He Jiahong is a professor of law at People's University in Beijing, director of law at

the Evidence Research Institute and Director of the Research Center for Wrongful

Convictions (established in March 2012) and director, Centre for Common Law

working in cooperation with the Great Britain-China Centre and the University of

Oxford Faculty of Law, in order to promote the value and principles of common

law in China by supporting research and study and to support legal practitioners in

both countries.

He is one of China's leading experts on criminal evidence, evidential investigation

and criminal procedure, and gained his doctorate of law at Northwestern

University in Chicago. He has been a visiting scholar, professor and researcher at

other prestigious universities and institutions around the world including New

York University and the Max-Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal

Law.

Often referred to as 'the John Grisham of China', Professor He is also a successful

writer of crime thrillers.

Karoline Kan is a child of a new China, born in a village near Tianjin three

months before the June Fourth killings in 1989, and her generation’s story is

tightly tied to China’s trajectory.

Of course, Karoline’s story is one of millions of others – but it is important to see

what’s going on in China now, and how this will lead us into the future.

Karoline is a journalist working for foreign media, now at The New York Times,

and though she was born in and grew up in China, she says: ‘I dare not say I

totally understand this country. I am still learning about it, seeing, hearing,

feeling and touching it. And you will see China as I discover it myself. What is

China? To me, it’s the people and their stories. My hope is that by telling my

family’s and my own “micro history”, readers inside and outside of China can

better understand the “macro history” of our country.

There are many others writing non-fiction about China, but most of them come

from outside the country and see it through foreigners’ eyes. I was educated

purely in China, so my perspective, coupled with my experience as a journalist

writing for foreign media, gives my already unique point of view an even greater

advantage. I am also the rarely heard voice of a young woman writing from and

about China.

Rights available:

World (ex English

and Portuguese)

Rights sold:

Hachette USA (WEL)

Bertrand Editora

(Portuguese)

KAROLINE KAN Under Red Skies:

A Personal History of Modern China

About the book and

author



A vivid account of the lives and culture of Libya during the early years of

Muammar Gaddafi's ruthless dictatorship.

The Libyan, a memoir, tells the story of the tumultuous relationship of Esther, a

beautiful and sophisticated American, and the enigmatic Omar,

a patriotic Libyan, two people from different worlds, bound together by

passion and fate. When they begin their married life in Libya, Esther finds herself

in a country terrorised by random arrests and public hangings. Driven by his

longing for a better Libya, Omar struggles to survive

politically while Esther lives in fear of her husband being imprisoned - or killed.

As Gaddafi transforms the richest nation in Africa into the most repressed and

brutalised country in the Arab world, Omar battles to realise his dream for

Libya's future.

And when he is forced to leave his beloved country to become a hunted

dissident, Omar realises he must choose between the woman he loves, and his

love for Libya.

This is up-market, commercial non-fiction perfect for reading groups and

book clubs.

Rights available:

World

ESTHER KOFOD The Libyan

About the author

About the book



Esther Kofod was born in Singapore of a Chinese mother and a Swiss father.

After completing her studies in Singapore and Switzerland, Esther attended

university in the United States. She then returned to Singapore to work for an

international advertising agency as a copywriter and creative director.

Esther was married to the Chairman of the Strategic Studies Center who also

acted as Foreign Advisor to Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, Libya. They lived in

Libya for five years before being forced to leave for political reasons.

Rights Sold:

• Rosinante, Danish

• The House of Books,

Dutch

• HarperCollins, English

• Otava, Finnish

• Les èditions Stock,

French

• Heyne/Random

House, German

• Libri Kiado, Hungarian

• Mondadori, Italian

• Daiwa Shobo, Japanese

• Proszynski Media,

Polish

• Grupo Planeta,

Portuguese (Portugal

only)

• Península/Grupo

• Planeta, Spanish

• Emily Books, Complex

Chinese

• QuangVan, Vietnamese

• Sanskrit, Thai

• Helios Kirjastus,

Estonian

• Illyrica, Croatia

• Nemesis Kitap, Turkey

• Swedish (Lind & Co)

HYEONSEO LEEThe Girl with Seven Names:

A North Korean Defector’s Story



‘The most riveting TED talk ever’ Oprah

‘Harrowing’ Wired

‘Hyeonseo Lee brought the human consequences of global

inaction on North Korea to the world's doorstep … Against

all odds she escaped, survived, and had the courage to

speak out’ Samantha Power, U.S. representative to the U.N.

‘A sad and beautiful story of a girl who could not even keep

her name, yet overcame all with the identity of what it is to

be human’ Jang Jin-sung, author of ‘Dear Leader’

‘Stirring and brave … true, committed, unvarnished and

honest. Lee has made her own life the keyhole to the

present, inside and outside of North Korea’ Scotsman

‘Remarkable bravery fluently recounted’ Kirkus

When Hyeonseo Lee illicitly leaves North Korea to visit distant relatives in

China, little does she know it will be fourteen years until she is reunited with

her family. At the time of her departure, she is a naïve seventeen-year-old

girl who believes North Korea is the best place in

the world to live, and that Kim Il-Sung is her saviour.

In a land of constant surveillance, her absence is soon noted, and it is her own

mother who advises her to stay away, lest her return incur the punishment of the

government authorities – imprisonment, torture, public execution – not only for

Hyeonseo, but also for her family.

This is the story not only of Hyeonseo’s escape – absolutely literally from the

darkness into the light – but also of her coming of age, of her ‘re-education’, of

her ability to successfully rebuild her life not once but twice – first in China, then in

South Korea, which proved to be the more difficult and unsettling of the two.

Thousands of refugees and escapees pour out of North Korea but thousands also

struggle to adapt, and rarely do they thrive as she has. None are able to tell their

story with such eloquence, so thoughtfully and truthfully. They are still afraid –

unlike Hyeonseo, who has become a strong and brave voice of the North Korean

refugee community.

HYEONSEO LEEThe Girl with Seven Names:

A North Korean Defector’s Story

About the author

About the book



Hyeonseo Lee is a North Korean refugee living in Seoul, South Korea. She is a

Young Leader at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and has

recently graduated from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies with a degree in

English and Chinese. She spends much of her time travelling around the world,

speaking about North Korean human rights and refugee issues.

In February 2013 she gave a TED talk that received an overwhelming and

positive response, with over 9 million views, and counting.

Hyeonseo has written for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LSE

Big Ideas blog, and for the South Korean Ministry of Unification. She aims to

start an organization to provide assistance to North Korean refugees.

'A good friend will bail you out of jail. A real friend will be in jail next to

you saying, “Man, we fucked up.”’

Henry Lin has spent most of his precocious young life involved with the

international criminal underworld. By the age of 14 he was a member of a

notorious San Francisco triad with links to Hong Kong and China. And by the

age of 18 he had seen, and done, more than most have in a lifetime.

Unsure of himself, and his place in the world, he fought to keep himself alive,

and earn respect from his peers. But when he finds out that his grandfather was

Chief of the Chinese secret service, and was one of the five most powerful and

well-connected men in China until his death two years ago, Henry discovers that

he has descended from a kind of underworld aristocracy.

After being sent to dubious reform schools in an attempt to rehabilitate him,

Henry was eventually incarcerated as a juvenile, and sentenced to eight years in

one of toughest prisons in the USA. It was there that he realised his internal

compass had been pointing him in the wrong direction, and through a writing

workshop called The Beat Within, he learned to channel his theretofore

misplaced energies into writing, slowly reflecting on his demons, and sending

him on the road to redemption.

This is a powerful, and brutally honest tale of the loyalty and loneliness of

gang life.

Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:

Typhoon Media

(WEL)

HENRY LIN*

The 100-Pound Gangster

About the book



Shocking and

often scary –

it’s like Gomorrah,

but HD.

*not his real name

At 30, Californian Leza Lowitz is single and travelling the world, which suits her

just fine. Why rush to settle down? Coming of age in Berkeley, California,

during the social, feminist and sexual revolutions of the 1960s, she learned

that marriage and family could wait. Or could they?

When she moves to Japan and meets the man of her dreams, her heart opens in

ways she never thought possible. And when she approaches 40 – the same age as

her mother when she had left the family behind to ‘find herself’ – Lowitz yearns for a

child. But attempts to become pregnant fail repeatedly and Lowitz begins to

question whether motherhood is really in the cards for her. Are there physical

issues, psychological blocks, or both? And just exactly what does it mean to become

a mother, after all? Is she ready to make the sacrifices necessary? And can she finally

heal the wounds that have kept motherhood at bay?

After much soul-searching, and a process of healing that takes her home to San

Francisco, then to New York and back to Tokyo (with a stopover in India on the

way), Lowitz comes to a deepening understanding of what motherhood truly means.

At the age of 44, she and her husband begin the laboriously bureaucratic process of

adopting a child in Japan, where bloodlines are paramount and family ties almost

feudal in their cultural

importance.

Here Comes the Sun is the story of how one woman learns to conquer her fears,

blast through the limits she has created for herself, and those she perceived around

her, and how she becomes the confident woman, and mother, she’d always hoped

she would be.

Rights available:

World (ex English)

Rights sold:Stone Bridge Press(WEL)

LEZA LOWITZHere Comes the Sun:

A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras

About the author

About the book



Leza lives in Tokyo with her husband, the writer Shogo Oketani and their eight-

year-old son. She has been running her own (very popular!) yoga studio there for

a decade, and travels around Japan and Asia to teach yoga, and write. Her debut

Young Adult novel Jet Black and the Ninja Wind (the first of a trilogy published by

Tuttle this autumn) is about a female ninja and her fight to save her native tribe.

Leza has published 17 books. She’s the author of Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By,

which has been translated into four languages as is one of the highest selling

poetry books on Amazon.

Also available

Up from the Sea

When a 140-foot wave

swallows up half your

village, how do you manage

to stay whole?

That’s the question fifteen-

year-old Kai Takamoto asks

himself after a tsunami

sweeps over his sleepy

seaside

town in Up from the Sea.

Written in the Japanese

poetic form of haibun, Up

From The Sea is a YA novel

in verse in the tradition of

Karen Hesse’s Out of the

Dust and Jame Richards’

Three Rivers Rising.

There is one man who Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scared of, and he’s been

dead for 79 years.

The cult of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who founded the modern Turkish

republic, is inescapable. His portrait hangs in every public office in the land by

law; many business owners display one behind their counters by choice. At 9.10

a.m. every 10 November, the country stops to mark the exact moment of his

death. In the flamboyant Dolmabahce Palace – where the revered leader

breathed his last in an upstairs bedroom – all the clocks are stopped at the

same time…

But another personality cult is on the rise in Turkey – that of the current

president, Tayyip Erdogan, who now dominates Turkish politics and world news

and who represents the opposite of almost everything Ataturk stood for.

Step by step, Erdogan is consolidating his grip on Turkey. Yet he knows that he

cannot take on Ataturk – at least not directly, and not yet.

Turkey is the buffer between Europe, Russia and the chaos of the Middle East.

Yet it also one of the least understood. In this book, the story of struggle for

Turkey’s future is told from the streets. We meet the men who sell trinkets at

political rallies – emblazoned with either Erdogan’s or Ataturk’s face, depending

on the political flavour of the event. There is the actor who makes a living as an

Ataturk impersonator, and the ad man who created Erdogan’s brand. Through

their voices, and others like them, we begin to reveal the question that is so

perplexing for western observers – why is half of Turkey determined to turn its

back on Ataturk’s republic? And why is the other half so determined to stop

them?

Rights available:

World (ex UK/Comm)

Rights sold:

William Collins

(UK/Comm)

HANAH LUCINDA SMITHTwo Tribes: Travels through Turkey’s

Personality Cults

About the author

About the book



Hannah Lucinda Smith is the Istanbul correspondent with The Times of London

and has been based in Turkey for five years.

River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's Future, explores the

fate of the Ganges and its significance for billions of people around the

world.

A metaphor for the current state of affairs in the country, and based on Mallet’s

fascination with the river during eight years of reporting on Asia – the last three

of them in India – this is a gripping, contemporary tale of how a river

worshipped by Indians, and symbolic of the country as a whole, is threatened by

a growing tide of industrial pollution and human waste.

The crisis of the Ganges has grave implications for global health – particularly at

a time when India prepares to overtake China as the world’s most populous,

and prosperous, nation.

Everyone from Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister who has promised to

save the river, to international microbiologists concerned about the spread of

antibiotic-resistant water, are beginning to pay attention to India’s most famous

waterway.

Rights available: World (ex English, Hindi and Chinese)

Rights sold:OUP (English, Hindi) Beijing White Horse Time (Simplified Chinese)Freedom Hill (Complex Chinese)

VICTOR MALLETRiver of Life, River of Death:

The Ganges and India’s Future

About the author

About the book



Victor Mallet is a journalist, commentator and author with more than two

decades of experience in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He is

currently south Asia bureau chief of the Financial Times, writing about India

and the region.

Previously he was bureau chief in Madrid and Asia editor in Hong Kong. He

twice won the Society of Publishers in Asia award for opinion writing. In India,

he was awarded the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism as a

foreign correspondent for a 2012 feature about the rise of Narendra Modi.

His highly praised book on the south-east Asian industrial revolution and the

1997-98 Asian financial crisis, The Trouble with Tigers, was first published in

1999.

'Probably the best (and

certainly the best-

written) of the instant

analyses of the Asian

crisis.'

Economist on

The Trouble with Tigers

‘An extraordinary and fascinating combination

of history, geography, environment, politics,

religion and much more.’

Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics

and Government at LSE

‘Rich in detail and sparkling with the insight of

a trained observer, Mallet’s chronicle is an

engaging and enlightening read.’

Shashi Tharoor, Indian MP and author of

Inglorious Empire

Whispered voices in the hallways of her childhood. A hastily packed suitcase. A

masked ball that ends early. A mother who will not reveal her past. A daughter's

search for the truth...

Bettina Mendl's life before the war had always been a mystery to her children, and

she refused to talk about it as they grew up. But as her life drew to a close, her

eldest daughter, Phyllis, began a quest to uncover the truth. From the unravelling of

a coded message, to a connection with Picasso and a British spy, A Story Dreamt

Long Ago follows Phyllis's astonishing journey of discovery revealing Bettina's

hidden past and her untold courage.

When Bettina Mendl arrived in Australia in 1939 from Vienna she was on the run. In

her homeland of Austria she was wanted by Hitler's SS, and in Australia she was an

enemy alien. Fearing internment, she became invisible, going deep into the outback

and surviving there, hand to mouth.

There Bettina met and fell in love with Joe McDuff, station manager and salt-of-the-

earth bushman. After Joe rescued Bettina from certain death, romance blossomed

and they settled into a loving marriage and a modest life with their two young

daughters, Phyllis and Dawn, who grew up completely unspoilt and blissfully

unaware of their mother's aristocratic past.

But when the Second World War finally came to an end, Bettina returned to Austria

to reclaim what remained of her family's vast estate, taking Joe and the girls to

Austria for the first time. Thus began a fairytale whirlwind of exotic travel, beautiful

clothes, mansions and five-star hotels, glamorous parties, famous faces, deportment

lessons and debutant balls for Phyllis and Dawn.

Like A Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren and based on the Bloch-Bauer story

about her family's stolen art, mixed a bit with Fake or Fortune, A Story Dreamt Long

Ago is so incredible you will be thinking about it, and talking about it - as I have

done - long after you turn the last page.

Recently published as Villa Mendl in German.

Rights available:

World (ex German)

Rights sold:

Amalthea (German)

PHYLLIS MCDUFFA Story Dreamt Long Ago - A Memoir

Non-Fiction

About the book



Never in the history of evolutionary science, both before and after Charles

Darwin, has an eminent and respected academic of evolutionary history, been so

erroneous in his or her analysis of the underpinning and founding seed and

driving forces of the evolution of the genus homo.

A penalty kick requires a goalkeeper and a goal, the species homo exists as a

socially and environmentally constrained species, or it is simply not human. A

penalty kick, far from being a solitary and introverted illustration of human

conduct, is actually one of the highest expressions of bipedal neotenous culture

and behaviour of the genus homo.

This book is the craziest, maddest football book ever written. It is complete

nonsense, using decades of research into the evolution of humankind as

dictated by the needs of football.

Written to please any and all fans in a protracted smiling kind of way, Homo

Passiens is surreally illustrated by Guardian, FT, LA Times contributor, Matt

Kenyon and with a 'forward' from Irvine Welsh (yes, the same one). In its

whimsy Homo Passiens is reminiscent of SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN and

CHINAMAN.

Homo Passiens includes special mentions of the likes of Lev Yashin (Opposable

Thumb), and with contributions from the likes of Professor Yuval at Sep Blatter

Faculty of Forensic and Passienic Anatomy at the University at Visp, in the

canton of Valais, and including research from the Alex Ferguson Passienic

Faculty of Genomic Studies in Broomloan, Govan, Glasgow. Et al

Rights sold:

Swan & Horn (WEL)

MICHAEL MCINNESHomo Passiens: Man the Footballer

Non-Fiction

About the book



Forward from

Irvine Welsh and

illustrated by

Guardian, FT, LA

Times contributor,

Matt Kenyon

This ground-breaking appraisal of one of the world’s more colourful heads of

state will be both observational and investigative. It will show how a foul-

mouthed, street-wise, public prosecutor-turned-mayor, schooled in the political

violence of the Philippines’ ‘Wild South,’ has imported his crude brand of

murderous politics into the highest office in the land, Manila’s Malacañang

Palace.

The first political biography of Rodrigo Duterte will trace the roots of his policies

to his notorious hair-trigger temper, his upbringing in a highly politicized family

and to his record as a public prosecutor and twenty-two years as mayor of

Davao.

In December 2015, Duterte claimed he had ‘killed or ordered the killing of more

than 1,700 people.’ Then he told reporters he was just joking. The trouble is, no

one knows when he is.

Jonathan Miller is Channel 4’s Asia Correspondent based in Bangkok. Three

months after Rodrigo Duterte was elected in the president’s southern home city

of Davao, Jonathan became the first foreign journalist to challenge him face-to-

face on the devastation wrought by his controversial and deadly war on drugs,

in a video seen by over 16 million people around the world.

Jonathan was born in Derry, Ireland, and has lived much of his life in Southeast

Asia, including correspondent postings with the BBC and, more recently, with

the UK’s Channel 4 News, for which he was also London-based Foreign Affairs

Correspondent for more than a decade.

Rights sold:Scribe (WEL) Fonghong (Simplified Chinese)Good Publishing (Complex Chinese)

JONATHAN MILLERDuterte Harry

Fury in the Philippines

Non-Fiction

About the book



About the author

Rights available: World (ex English, Hindi and Chinese)

‘I do not think it an exaggeration to say that history is largely a history of

inflation.’ Economist Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)

The repercussions of price rises (or lack thereof) can be seen across the globe,

from the hyperinflation of the Weimer Republic in Germany in the early 1920s

to that of Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, or

the stagflation that shaped many Western economies in the 1970s or the

deflation that defined Japan following the end of the economic miracle in the

1990s.

But what if these figures aren’t 100% reliable? What if the official statistics,

rather than accurately describing the rise and fall of prices, were in fact giving

investors a false picture of what the economy was actually like? This scenario is

precisely what this book, The Inflation Myth, is here to expose: that although

controlling inflation might be the most important part of economic policy,

many governments and central banks are in fact regularly misleading the

public over how the economy is really performing. In a world of where the

politics of ‘fake news’ are centre-stage so economics, too, has long been in the

throes of a post-truth moment.

The Inflation Myth will go on to look at the consequences of such

misinformation. What are its effects for the global economy? How can the

system be changed and improved to overcome this? And for those looking to

make business or investment decisions, how can you go about looking behind

the false picture created by the inflation myth to make the most of your hard-

earned money?

Formally Executive Chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, and now founder of Mobius Capital Partners, he has been called the ‘Pied Piper’ and the ‘Dean of Emerging Markets’ (delete the Yul Brenner bit at the end of this sentence for space).

Rights sold:

Bombardier (USA)

BWP (Complex Chinese)

FinanzBuch/Meunchner

(German)

Pan Rolling (Japanese)

Mark MobiusThe Inflation Myth

Non-Fiction

About the book



About the author

$uperHubs - an instant bestseller in Germany, examines how the world’s

most powerful executives rule the world - and our lives - because they

build extensive, influential personal networks.

Sandra, after having the opportunity to observe these powerful networks

behind the scenes in a professional as well as personal context, began to realise

that in a world where everything can be commoditised and automated, and

human interactions increasingly digitised, these select few preside over the most

powerful asset: a unique network of relationships that spans the globe. In order

to be effective, leaders must possess the requisite skills for developing

connections with peers, and therefore the financial elite invests in these

relationships in order to thrive.

Every action of any one of these financiers directly affects the lives of each and

every one of us - and their power is multiplied exponentially because of these

interconnections with other power players throughout the world.

Rights sold:

Nicholas Brealey

(WEL)

FinanzBuch Verlag

(German)

Grand China (Simplified

Chinese)

TAC Publishing

(Japanese)

Yeamoonsa (Korean)

Lua de Papel

(Portugal)

SANDRA NAVIDI$uperHubs: How the Financial Elite and

Their Networks Rule Our World

About the author

About the book



Sandra Navidi is an attorney admitted to practise law in the US and in

Germany, and as the founder and CEO of Beyond Global consultancy she has

worked with the finance industry's most recognisable and prestigious firms. She

has high-level access to an international network of global industry

leaders and is an expert commentator on economic matters. She has given

more than 500 interviews to international media since March 2009, and as a

public speaker at large industry events. She has key-noted among Nobel Prize

Laureates, prime ministers, senior policy makers and top investors.

'An intimate glimpse into the obscure world of high finance … [which] should be

voraciously consumed by anyone in business.'

PROFESSOR NOURIEL ROUBINI, Professor of Economics, NYU Stern School of

Business; and CEO, Roubini Macro Associates

'In $uperHubs, Ms Navidi skillfully applies network science to the global financial

system and the human networks that underpin it. $uperHubs is a topical and

relevant book that should be read by anyone seeking a fresh perspective on the

human endeavor that is our financial system.‘

PROFESSOR LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS

Harvard; former US Secretary of the Treasury, former Director of the US

National Economic Council, former president of Harvard University

'$uperHubs is written with great style, but also contains important substance.

Navidi sees the global economy as a complex, adaptive system, and situates the

financial system at the very core of this economy where a concentrated number

of real human beings – the “superhubs” – exercise an unrecognized degree of

economic and political power, threatening the future stability of the economy

and even our democratic political systems. By identifying these systemic

problems, Navidi brings us one step closer to appropriate solutions. A “must

read”, and a pleasure to do so.'

WILLIAM R. WHITE

Chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee (EDRC) at the

OECD; former Executive Committee Member, Head of the Monetary and

Economic Department (MED), and Economic Adviser at the Bank for

International Settlements (BIS); former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada

'Exceedingly illuminating professional and personal insights into the global

financial system. Highly recommendable reading.'

PROFESSOR JÜRGEN STARK,

Former member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, and

former Vice President of the Bundesbank





'Sandra Navidi impresses with a masterful piece of both reporting and analysis.'

PROFESSOR KLAUS SCHWAB

Founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum

'In $uperHubs, Sandra Navidi provides an entertaining and absorbing portrayal

of the networks used by many of the top executives in finance and traces

relationships and their network effects on a broader basis. She draws many

useful conclusions and provides terrific portraits of some of the major players in

finance today.'

STEPHEN A. SCHWARZMAN

Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder, Blackstone

'How are we governed? By whom and how? These are the classic questions to

which globalization and the financial markets have given a new

urgency. $uperHubs provides a front-row seat in the theater of fundamental

change.”

OLAFUR RAGNAR GRIMSSON

President of Iceland 1996-2016

'$uperHubs is an analytical, engaging, and insightful guide for business leaders

in markets which are global, dynamic, and complex. It is a must-read for all who

are striving for growth and excellence!"

HIS EXCELLENCY, MR SHAUKAT AZIZ

Former Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Pakistan, former CEO of Citibank

Global Wealth Management, and Author

'$uperHubs offers new insight into those with the power to change the world.'

PROFESSOR IAN BREMMER

Founder and President of Eurasia Group





Every Human Intention renders Japan's present moment—the post-

Fukushima moment— with the same dry-eyed clarity, the same

prescience and the same narrative tenacity that made Norma

Field‘s In the Realm of a Dying Emperor an instant modern classic

and long-selling success.

Dreux Richard spent six years as an investigative reporter on the beat of

Tokyo’s immigrant communities and Japan’s nuclear heartland. He shows us the

scrapyards where African migrant labourers sleep, fifteen of them each to a

shipping container; the offices of nuclear regulatory officials while they engage

in the elaborate game-rigging that will ensure Japan’s reactors restart on the

basis of political exigency; the places where the consequences of national policy

are felt, including the northernmost town in Japan, rapidly

depopulating as its residents age and die; and perched on the shoulder

of a half-Japanese literary translator who returns to Japan after a decade of

absence and realises everything soft and gentle about the country may

soon be stripped away.

By marshalling the perspectives of these protagonists and integrating his own,

Richard's Every Human Intention enhances the Japan-related canon,

sitting comfortably alongside Donald Richie’s penetrating outsider’s gaze; Ian

Buruma’s exceptional appreciation of history’s role in the cultural life of modern

Japan; and Jake Adelstein’s gritty street reporting.

Rights available:

World (ex USA)

Rights sold:

Pantheon, PRH

(WEL)

DREUX RICHARDEvery Human Intention:

Japan in the New Century

About the author

About the book



Dreux Richard is an American writer, journalist and literary translator. He covers

Japan's African community and world affairs for the Japan Times, including a

notable and extensive investigation into the dangers and risks taken at one of

the USAs 'safest' nuclear plants. His work has also appeared, or is forthcoming,

in Days Japan, Kyoto Journal and Metropolis.

A moving, cosmopolitan memoir from Keane Shum, a New York-qualified lawyer from Australia and Hong Kong now working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok.

With its starting point in Hong Kong, now regularly in the news linked to China, we feel there is a ready audience for book reflecting the city’s global perspective, and its transcontinental heritage.Selective Preservation is Keane Shum’s memoir about, but also extending far fromHong Kong, with stories from both the city's history and his own that depart from the usual, colonial-focused English narratives.

Cut between stories of Hong Kong are personal stories told in both his father’s words and his own: of his warlord great-grandfather who fled to Hong Kong in 1925; of two years Keane spent working for a corporate law firm in the city; and of his parents’ struggles with a rare cancer and dementia.

There are also chapters rooted in his transcontinental upbringing (his mother is Indonesian) and his career, including as an assumed Asian American attending university and law school in the US and now as an aid worker interviewing Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.

Parts of the manuscript draw from essays Shum has previously published, including one most recently in Granta also in The Atlantic on the 2014 Hong Kong protests. Others have appeared in journals such as the Colorado Review, Catsapult, Bellingham Reviewand The Common. His essay in the Iowa Review was selected as notable in Best American Essays 2013. His essay in the Asia Literary Review/Griffith Review joint issue was reviewed as ‘excellent reportage’ by The Sydney Morning Herald. Another essay Shum wrote for Griffith Review was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. An Australian, Keane has also published essays in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Rights available:

World

Keane ShumSelective Preservation

About the author

About the book



Keane has an MFA in creative writing from the City University of Hong Kong, a

JD from Georgetown and a BA in history from Yale.

© S

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Beyond the beach clubs and plush five-star hotel lobbies, the heart of

Southeast Asia is a dark and forbidding place where the lust for power and

naked greed mean that ordinary people’s lives are uncertain and insecure,

with conflict never far below the calm surface of outward politeness.

The first chapter of this book is framed as a journey, Michael’s own long voyage

of discovery in the region over the past three decades. What

follows is taxonomy of sorts, a detailed delving into the different forms of

conflict, ranging from the prevalence of elite power struggle with violent

consequences to ethnic and religious wars, and territorial disputes.

Blood & Silk: will challenge conventional wisdom underpinned by armchair

liberalism, and will highlight the stark realities of societies that

remain in flux, which have travelled far but have yet to settle down.

Rights sold:

Weidenfeld &

Nicolson

World All Languages

MICHAEL VATIKIOTISBlood & Silk: Power and Conflict

in Modern Southeast Asia

About the author

About the book



Michael Vatikiotis has worked for the BBC World Service, and was the

Managing Editor and Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

He is currently the Director, Asia, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, based in

Singapore and contributes regularly to international media.

He contributes regularly to international media and has written his own books

of fiction and non-fiction include Indonesian Politics under Suharto, Political

Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree, Debatable Land: Stories

from Southeast Asia, The Spice Garden and, most recently, The Painter of Lost

Souls.

Michael has a PhD from Oxford University and in 2005 was awarded an

honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland.

‘A fascinating and many-layered portrait, brimming with colourful characters, insights

and anecdotes… a rich palimpsest as can only be written by a longstanding student and

scholar of the region like Michael Vatikiotis’ Thant Myint-U, author of

The River of Lost Footsteps

Your guide to meth fiefdoms, terrorized party towns and other places you’ll

probably never visit.

Spanning Thailand’s insurgency zone to the swamplands of Vietnam, the book

examines lives bound by hard truths. These are places where, in the absence of

law, ordinary people must summon brilliant ingenuity to survive. But when that

fails, even good men and women will resort to stunning violence.

The book penetrates the worlds of Islamic crust punks, dog-thief syndicates,

North Korean restaurateurs and others chasing fortunes in the shadows. These

characters aren’t just tormenated by local tyrants. Their lives are also

complicated by greater forces — namely Western conglomerates or old US

foreign policy misdeeds, still reverberating through the region.

But life in the shadowlands isn’t always ponderous. From the guerrilla fiefdoms

of Myanmar to punk-rock squat houses in Aceh, humour often flourishes in

bleak places. Collectively, their stories illuminate a region in flux, torn between

old codes and the pressures of the 21st century.

There is no better place to observe this clash than the darker parts of the map,

beyond the tourist trail, where armed clans rule.

Rights sold:

Icon Books (WEL)

Rights available:

World (ex English)

PATRICK WINNHello, Shadowlands: Inside Southeast Asia’s

Organized Crime Wave

About the author

About the book



Patrick Winn is an award-winning American journalist whose work has

appeared on NBC News, The Atlantic, the BBC and other outlets.

He’s currently the Asia correspondent for Public Radio International. Each week,

his voice is heard by millions on NPR stations.

Winn has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award (known as the “Poor

Man’s Pulitzer”) as well as a prestigious National Press Club award. He’s a two-

time winner of Amnesty International’s Human Rights Press Awards.

He has also worked as an expert consultant for Anthony Bourdain: Parts

Unknown — most notably on its Emmy-winning debut episode on Myanmar.

Documents

Asia Literary Agency · Intan Paramaditha Apple & Knife ... love, to the melancholy ... the stories weave an intricate tapestry building hopes, lost childhoods, and the