Unwelcome by Quincy Carroll My rating: 5 of 5 stars In ‘Unwelcome’ we follow Cole Chen through his awkward misadventures in California and Changsha, China. The twenty-three-year-old has come back from his second stint in China and is crashing on his brother’s couch. Our introduction to Cole is through the eyes of his more successful … Unwelcome
THE SPOTTER A phalanx of drivers waited at the front of the arrivals hall. Standing with the others, Lucas had a sign for a certain Jorge Martínez: a passenger who would never arrive. Lucas was there to make an important decision, not to drive somebody into town. He thought it would be agony to choose. … Buenos Aires Triad Chapter 1
Originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel as When Malaparte Met Mao. A former fascist sees only the good in Mao’s China. In 1956 Italian novelist Curzio Malaparte received an invitation to travel to Beijing for a commemoration of the death of writer Lu Xun. Malaparte is most famous for his … Eyes Wide Shut: Malaparte in China
As a teenager, I read The Comedians and in my twenties The Power and the Glory, The Quiet American and The Human Factor. The Human Factor I read in a hostel in Colombia. In my early thirties, I bought a cheap copy of Our Man in Havana in Argentina. Reading it in Spanish, some of … Graham Greene Reviews
A review from Carlos Hughes, author of White Monkey: What’s an honest man to do for a living when they live in a country where inflation rises up by 20% overnight and the price of bread becomes an expensive commodity? This is the dilemma of the main protagonist ‘Lucas’ in the wonderfully written crime noir … A Review of Buenos Aires Triad
A few years ago, the police in Buenos Aires busted a Chinese mafia group known as the Pixiu Triad. I wrote about this group and its activities in my article published in the LA Review of Books, China Channel. Inspired by those real events, I chose the xiezhi to be the symbol of the Chinese … The Xiezhi Triad in Argentina
‘A Certain Kind of Power’ is an entertaining dissection of corruption, in which Australian author Ryan Butta recreates an Argentina of scandals and cloak and dagger moves. Our guide in the county’s capital, Buenos Aires, is Mike Costello, a jaded American corporate spy. An aging one-time army man, Mike has been in Argentina too long … A Certain Kind of Power
This novel successfully captures the backpacker scene in China’s Yunnan Province in the 2000s. However, the main characters are not backpackers per se but travellers who never want to go home. The fictional setting, Shuangshan, is – I think – based on Dali, a town by the beautiful Erhai Lake. Yunnan is home to many … Harvest Season
Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg: Five stars for the characters and detailed, but never boring, descriptions of New York in 1959. Harry Angel is a private detective living in the Chelsea Hotel. On the job, he drives and subways around town with soup stains on his tie. Harlem, Times Square, Coney Island, the apartment buildings, the … Too much New York
