I wrote a piece for Apollo magazine about the recent destruction of shrines and mosques in Xinjiang.
Rear Vision
What’s often lacking in news stories about Xinjiang is context, especially of the region’s complex history, so I’m glad that the excellent ABC radio program Rear Vision focuses this week on the wider issues behind the concentration camps. The program features contributions from myself, the historian David Brophy, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Josh Chin, and Omer Kanat of the World Uyghur Congress. You can listen/download here.
Along the Ili River
I wrote about the arrest of the Kazakh activist Serikzhan Bilash and the links between the Uyghur and Kazakh communities in the region for the LRB Blog.
New edition of China’s Forgotten People
Bloomsbury will be publishing a new, updated edition of China’s Forgotten People in June. The update consists of a foreword and afterword that deals with the camps in Xinjiang – their origins and their rationale, what we know and what we don’t, and why this is such a terrible new chapter in the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to control and shape the region and its peoples.
Piece for Zocalo Public Square
Internees at a ‘de-extremification’ event in Lop county
I wrote about the camps in Xinjiang for Zocalo Public Square.
Xinjiang for Francophones
Glad to see Xinjiang getting coverage for Francophone audiences on National Radio in Canada- and I’m grateful to them for featuring my book China’s Forgotten People (segment starts around 13h 9m) https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/plus-on-est-de-fous-plus-on-lit/episodes/427176/audio-fil-du-lundi-18-fevrier-2019 …
The arrest of Lu Guang
I wrote about the arrest of the photographer Lu Guang in Xinjiang for Frieze magazine.
BBC Breakfast
I went on BBC Breakfast this morning to talk briefly about the Xinjiang camps.
BBC Today Programme
I spoke briefly about the Xinjiang camps on the BBC Today program. They got my name wrong. Oh well! You can listen here
Xinjiang Camps ‘Legalised’
I spoke about the legalisation (and thus official acknowledgement of) the re-education camps in Xinjiang on the BBC last night. Segment begins at 24.49.
Review of Chasing the Chinese Dream in the TLS
Thanks to Amy Hawkins for a thorough, perceptive review of my book (alongside two others) in the TLS.
“It is always refreshing to read anything on China that takes the focus away from Beijing and Shanghai … Holdstock is at his best when detailing China’s rural to urban transformation.”
UCHANGE
I thought it was time to write a story that heavily features a goose.
My story, UCHANGE, is in the new issue of Banshee.
Free Rahile Dawut
I wrote about the disappearance of Rahile Dawut (pictured holding the camera), and hundreds of thousands of other people in Xinjiang, for the LRB Blog.
Collection
My first story collection ‘The False River’ will be out next year from Unthank Press.
Chinese edition of China’s Forgotten People
A Dream of Grey Mansions
There’s an extract from Chasing the Chinese Dream up on the China Channel.
The World Tonight
I spoke about Xinjiang and Theresa May’s visit to China on The World Tonight on Radio 4 last night. That segment starts at 12:52.
A Balcony in the Forest
I wrote a short piece about the re-issue of Julien Gracq’s novel for the TLS.
Generation HK
I wrote about Ben Bland’s book on activism and identity in Hong Kong for the Financial Times.
Lost Species Day
I wrote about extinction for the LRB Blog. Spare a thought for the thylacine.
China Channel
The LARB has a new China blog which has lots of good content by people who really know their stuff. I wrote something for a roundtable discussion on Han Song’s story ‘Finished’, a Kafka-esque story about migrant workers.
Prospect piece
I wrote a piece for Prospect magazine about wealth inequality in China. It offers brief portraits of several people in my new book, Chasing the Chinese Dream.
Katalin Street
I wrote a piece for 3 a.m. magazine about Magda Szabó.
CUP and ‘Academic Freedom’
I wrote about Cambridge University Press’s decision to censor some of its content in China for the London Review of Books Blog.
Reading in Stockholm
Looking forward to reading from The Casualties in Stockholm next week. Event details here.
The ‘perfect police state’
Two very good pieces from Xinjiang this week – one, a look at the securitisation of Xinjiang by Tom Philips in The Guardian (in which I am quoted), the other a nice piece of reporting from Bortala in Xinjiang by Edward Wong from the New York Times.
The China Journal
Thanks to Timothy A. Grosse for his generous review of China’s Forgotten People in The China Journal.
Coming out in September
The Souls of China
I wrote a piece on Ian Johnson’s remarkable book about the rebirth of religion in China for Literary Review.
The Phantom of Constancy
My piece for Open Letters Monthly on the (almost) lost novel of Zdanevich who worked with Picasso, Miro Ernst and Giacometti et al, and in the mid 1970s could still be seen wandering round Paris’s Latin Quarter wearing a sheepskin coat, herding a flock of cats before him.
