Asian Review of Books

The Warring States Period is one of the most important times in China’s history. It marked the end of one dynasty–the Zhou–and the beginning of a new imperial era, under the Qin. It’s an era that historian Andrew Seth Meyer describes as one of the most important revolutions in world history: The fall of the old aristocratic order, the birth of Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism, and the creation of the imperial system that would shape China for over two thousand years. Andrew has put together one of the first English comprehensive histories of the Warring States period in his new book To Rule All Under Heaven: A History of Classical China from Confucius to the First Emperor (Oxford UP, 2026)

In February 2022, British explorer Charlie Walker flew to Siberia's Sakha Republic to walk a thousand miles up frozen rivers to the Arctic Ocean, through Earth's coldest inhabited region. Days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Tamping down his concerns, he continued on his journey, meeting indigenous people and ice road truckers along the way. Yet his trip ended in fear and confusion, with an arrest and a month in a Yakutsk jail, the story of his new book, On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance and Survival (Duckworth, 2026) Charlie is an award-winning explorer, author and international keynote speaker. He has travelled over 60,000 miles by foot, horse, raft, bicycle, ski and dugout canoe, in places as varied as the Tibetan plateau, the Mongolian steppe, the Congolese jungle, the Arctic tundra, the highlands of New Guinea and the Sahara desert. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Scientific Exploration Society Explorer Award winner, and the author of Through Sand & Snow (Nielsen UK: 2021) and On Roads That Echo (Nielsen UK: 2021) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of On Thin Ice. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

What do the people closest to power really think about the system they serve? That’s perhaps one of the most important questions one could ask about North Korea, still one of the world’s least understood countries. Today, we’re joined by Jieun Baek, author of Privileged But Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness (Yale UP, 2026). She draws on in-depth interviews with North Korean elite escapees—from senior party cadres and diplomats to military officers and wealthy, politically connected figures—to explore a group often assumed to be secure, influential, and loyal. She finds that even those with access to better housing, education, overseas postings, and material comforts remain subject to a political system in which one misstep can have devastating consequences—not only for themselves, but for their families. We talk about what it means to be an elite in North Korea, why some people defect while others stay, and what elite grievances can and can’t tell us about the country’s future. Jieun Baek is an author and scholar specializing in authoritarian governance, regime stability, elite political behavior, and information access in closed societies, with a particular focus on North Korea and Burma. Her research draws on more than fifteen years of fieldwork and sustained engagement with hard-to-reach populations, including defectors, dissidents, diplomats, former officials, and individuals operating within and across tightly controlled political systems. She is also the author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society (Yale University Press: 2016). She can be found on LinkedIn and Instagram. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Privileged But Powerless. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The Springs-and-Autumns period is a strange period in Chinese history. Coming after the decline of the Zhou, and before the famous Warring States Period, this period of Chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon, no strong sense of the mandate of heaven, rules of chivalry that wouldn’t seem out of place in medieval Europe, and roles passed down through lineage–and not awarded on the basis of merit. Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China’s "aristocratic age” in his book titled, appropriately, China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period (Princeton UP, 2026). Yuri Pines is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy, The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China, Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography, and other books. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of China’s Aristocratic Age. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Chapal Rani was one of India’s most famous performers of jatra, Bengal’s popular theater. Traditionally, all the roles, including female roles, were played by men—and Chapal Rani was perhaps the most prominent performer of women on the stage. He’s also the subject of a new book from Sandip Roy, titled Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal. Roy, who joins us the show today, tells the story of Chapal Rani’s life, from stardom to obscurity and later rediscovery; how Chapal Rani would transform himself every night onstage; and how jatra changes how we talk about gender and performance. Sandip Roy is a writer, columnist, and podcaster currently living in Kolkata. He is a columnist for Mint Lounge, The Hindu, and the host of the Sandip Roy Show on Indian Express. His work has appeared in The New York Times, BBC, The San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Huffington Post, Conde Nast Traveller, among other publications. For over a decade, Roy was editor of Trikone, the world’s oldest magazine on LGBTQ+ South Asian issues. He is the author of the novel Don’t Let Him Know. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review