My interview with Lisa Ross on Uyghur shrines in the desert is at the Los Angeles Review of Books- thanks again to her for answering my questions in such a thoughtful manner.

I write about the apocalyptic pollution in China on the LRB Blog

Previous ‘Pollution in China!’ posts:

Climate Change?

China’s Big Society

A mining project in Xilinhaote, Inner Mongolia

Isobel Yeung, who works for CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, recently wrote a piece for The Independent in which she argued that the Western media are misrepresenting China’s policies towards ethnic minorities in Inner Mongolia. She argued that the government aren’t trying to destroy the culture of nomadic herders by moving them into cities- they just want to improve their ‘medieval lifestyle’. Here’s my response to this in The Independent.

The prologue of the novel I’m working on, and that’s working on me, is up at the PEN America site.

The program for the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York is now online, featuring many great writers, such as James Kelman, Aleksandar Hemon and Edna O’Brien. If you happen to have $1000 kicking around, I’d suggest you get a ticket for the Philip Roth Literary Gala event.

I’ll be taking part in two events in the festival, the first A Literary Safari, where I will be pursued, Running Man style, through a booby trapped labyrinth while giving a reading. The second is a more sedentary affair, though possibly equally perilous- I’ll be moderating an event on Revitalizing Endangered Languages.

Lots to check out- and if you’re not in NYC then, I’m sure a lot of it will be online on the PEN site.

I have a post on the London Review of Books Blog about turning the news into computer games, including Endgame: Syria and one on cotton picking in Uzbekistan.

I have a review of Sven Lindqvist’s The Myth of Wu Tao Tzu up at the Los Angeles Review of Books

Reblogged from autonomous region: uyghur notes and journal:

I recently came across this set of images shot in Yamaliq, a hillside neighborhood in western Urumqi right behind the main train station, by Chinese photographer Tian Lin (b.1971), who is a native of Urumqi. As many of you have already known, the neighborhood has been occupied mostly by extremely poor Uyghur migrants from other towns of Xinjiang. The set of black-and-white images presents a powerful story about darkness and hopelessness, accompanied by some well written short texts, stories, and poems about the dispossessed residents of Yamaliq. 

Read more… 65 more words

Babur and Humayun

I have a short post on the Uzbek government’s ban on Valentine’s Day up on the LRB blog. There is also a ban in Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where Valentine’s cards and celebrations are banned on the grounds that the day is a Western import that goes against their society’s values and traditions.

The Uzbek government’s alternative has been to suggest that February 14^th be used to celebrate the Moghul Emperor Babur’s birthday; Tamerlane, his great-grand father, is already frequently invoked by President Karimov. Ever since its independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been attempting to construct a nationalistic narrative of Uzbek culture and history. One of its main vehicles for doing this has been the variety performances that celebrate Independence and Navro’z (a festival with Zoroastrian roots which marks the spring equinox). However, just as few people seem to pay much attention to these gala occasions, so it seems unlikely that this year’s added invective against Valentine’s Day will have dissuaded many young people from finding ways to mark the holiday.