Aye, There Be Pirates

At the start, don’t say I didn’t warn you this is a blatant act of self-promotion. The new issue of the Asian Literary Review includes a piece by me on the pirates of the South China Sea past and present.

The piece interweaves my experiences travelling across the South China Sea last year on an oil tanker with stories of the pirates of old across the region from Southern China to Vietnam and Borneo to the Riau Islands. The Asia Literary Review people have illustrated it nicely with some old maps and images of South China Sea pirates.

Even if you’re not interested in pirates there’s plenty in the new ALR to enjoy:

Fiction from Alice Nelson, Anna Jaquiery, O Thiam China, Qiu Xialong, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Dipika Mukherjee and Tom Cho

Poetry from Margaret Atwood, Louise Ho, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Andrew Barker and Sally Dellow

An interview with Nadeem Aslam

An essay on writers on China from Frances Wood

Photography of the Mumbai bombings from Indranil Mukherjee

Details of how to get a copy from the ALR’s web site (Click here) or from bookshops in Hong Kong and selected other places (I’ve seen it in Daunts in Landon for instance).