Empire of Horses by John Man (Pegasus Books)

In the earliest days of humanity, “an ocean of grass” stretched across continents, ignored until horses and bovine animals were domesticated and needed to be fed. Herdsmen traveled across the grasslands, moving their livestock from one spot to the next, becoming “pastoral nomads.” They discovered that horses, which could be tamed, ridden, used to carry heavy burdens, and (when necessary) eaten, were valuable animals that gave rise to a new civilization--one that was dominated by horsemen.

With the advent of the Bronze and Iron Ages, the horsemen became archers, hunting with bows and metal arrowheads. The skill they needed to hunt for food became extraordinarily useful when employed against enemies, aiming deadly arrows while astride swift horses, and the precursor of medieval knights was born.

Within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, the nomadic region of Ordos was born, which became the empire of a mysterious tribe called the Xiongnu. Where these people came from is a matter of speculation but it’s a fact that they were formidable warriors. Soon their territory extended to 350 kilometers from the Han Dynasty’s capital of Chang’an and their leader, Modun, was hungry to expand his borders.

He had been a significant problem for China for years, attacking its northern borders with his “horseback archers,” enough that the Han emperor tried to buy him off, with gifts of silk and Chinese princesses. This bought an uncertain peace for sixty but failed to achieve the underlying goal: to weaken the invaders by giving them a taste for Chinese luxury. The Xiongnu counted their wealth in horses and bows with the strength to turn arrows into armor-piercing bullets.

The Xiongnu never succeeded in conquering China but for centuries they maintained their empire, which was “almost twice the size of Rome’s”  and “took what they wanted,” until at last they fell to the time-honored practice of divide and conquer. The southern Xiongnu succumbed to Chinese influence while the northerners clung to tradition. Still the victories of their empire are legendary, to the point that modern-day Mongolians claim them as their ancestors and Modun as the influence for Genghis Khan.

The Mongol name for the Xiongnu is Hunnu, or, Man says, “simply Huns.” This takes him to the theory that this first nomadic empire was the root of another army of mounted archers, one that would be scorned as barbarians and that would eventually take over the Balkans from the Caspian Sea to the Baltic, “an area half the size of the USA. Attila, leading his people known as the Huns, was a “juggernaut that could live by pillage,” much like the Xiongnu. 

In the mid-eighteenth century, a French Sinologist in a five-volume work called A General History of the Huns, Turks and Mongols made the astounding and unsubstantiated claim that “Attila’s Huns were descendants of the ‘Hiong-nou.” This theory was given credence by Edward Gibbon, the 1911 edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica, and historians of the 1930s. However, as Man says, the one conclusive similarity is both the Xiongnu  (or Hunnu) and the Huns came out of nowhere, established their empires by conquest, and then completely vanished. With enigmas like that, especially when they bear almost the same name, who can possibly keep from romantic speculation? ~Janet Brown

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)

Sea of Poppies by Amitov Ghosh is truly a story of epic proportions. It is the first volume in the Ibis trilogy and was published in 2008. The story continues in River of Smoke, published in 2011 and concludes in Flood of Fire published in 2015. The initial story is set prior to the First Opium War between the Great Britain and China in a time when Britain’s East India Company was trading opium made in Bengal, a part of the Indian sub continent (currently Bangladesh),  to China.

The trilogy is named after a ship called the Ibis. A former slave-ship which was being refitted in Calcutta to accommodate the coolies who were to be transported to Mauritius, coolies being indentured laborers.  The ship’s new owner is Benjamin Burnham, an evangelist and a prominent player in the opium trade. Aside from Burnham, he main characters who wind up on the Ibis are an ordinary Indian woman and the man who saves her from certain death, an american sailor with a secret, a disgraced Rajah, and a Chinese opium addict.

Deeti is a housewife and mother. She is married to a crippled husband who works at the local opium factory. Deeti discovers that she was drugged with opium by her mother-in-law on her wedding night and was raped by her husband’s brother. She never tells her daughter, Kabutri, the truth about who her real father is. Deeti’s husband dies and fearing what her husband’s family will do to her daughter, she sends Kabutri to live with her relatives. The brother who raped her says demands Deeti to marry him but she refuses and chooses sati (ritual of self immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre) before succumbing to her brother-in-law’s wishes. On the day she is to perform the sati, she is saved by a lower caste man named Kulua. They both escape and find passage on the Ibis.

Zachary Reid is an American who is the son of a white father and a quadroon mother. He had joined the crew of the Ibis on its first journey from Baltimore to Calcutta. In a series of mishaps on the sea, many of the senior crew are lost and Reid finds himself quickly rising in rank. Once he sets foot in Calcutta, he is treated as gentry and is offered the job of second mate on the Ibis’s next voyage, transporting coolies to Mauritius!

Neel Rattan Halder is the rajah of Raskhali and also the ruler of the zamindars (Indian property owners). Halder has run up a huge debt and is unable to pay it back. Burnham says he can settle his debts by giving up his zamindary (property owned and governed by the rajah) but Halder refuses. Halder is then accused of forgery and is sent to trial, loses his case and is sentenced to spend seven years in Mauritius.

Paulette is a French orphan who grew up with her unconventional father and feels more comfortable in a sari than western clothes. Mr. Burnham had taken Paulette in after the death of her father and frowns on her love Indian culture. As Paulette gets older, Burnham is pressuring her to marry his friend, an older man named Kendalbushe. We also discover that Burnham has a perversion of his own which he as Paulette satisfy.  Fearing for her future, Paulette decides to run away and manages to gain passage on the Ibis. 

Finally, we meet Nob Kissin Baboo, a man who is the catalyst that will set many actions in motion aboard the Ibis. He works for Mr. Burnham as an overseer and believes that Zachary Reid is the incarnation of Krishna.

The prose flows smoothly although you may have to look up some terms which may be unfamiliar if your knowledge of colonial British India is limited. You will be exposed to words such as zamindar, zamindary, rajahs, sepoys, and lascars which you may have to look up on your own, but it does not effect the story. This book has everything you can hope for in an epic - high adventure, love, romance, and betrayal, loyalty and trust and the pursuit of a happier life. ~Ernie Hoyt

Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe (Haikasoru)

Miyuki Miyabe is mostly known for her suspense and mystery novels. This is her first fantasy novel published in 2003 in Japanese. The English version was translated by Alexander O. Smith and published in 2007. It is a coming of age story set in the fantasy world of Vision.

The story starts off right after the beginning of the new school year. A rumor has spread about a house located near the Mihashi Shrine called the Daimatsu Building. This is how our hero, Wataru Mitani, heard about it. He was told by his friend, Katchan whose real name is Katsumi. They are both in the fifth grade and go to Joto Elementary School. However, no one knows how or who started the rumors. Wataru is not prone to believe in rumors and wants to get facts to satisfy his scientific and logical mind. He makes a promise with his friend Katchan to sneak out at night “to see if there really is a ghost.” “And if one shows up, I wanna see whose ghost it is.” 

At night, as Wataru was debating about going to the alleged haunted house or not and not wanting to break his promise with his friend when he hears a voice in his room. A young girl’s voice even though he is alone. He almost puts it out of his mind when she speaks to him again. He now believes he has to investigate. 

The two boys manage to go to the Daimatsu Building near midnight, only to be discovered by Mr. Daimatsu himself, along with his son Noriyuki and his daughter Kaori, who was sitting in a wheelchair. Wataru thought she was beautiful but appeared to be despondent. She didn’t smile, she didn’t show any reaction to what was happening around her. Wataru began to think that her condition might be related to this house which is said to be haunted in some way. Wataru also thought it was strange that the Mr. Daimatsu would be taking his daughter out for fresh air at this time of night. 

The strange happenings coincides with the admission of a new transfer student at Wataru’s school named Mitsuru Ashikawa. A boy whose popular with the girls, gets good grades, and his good at sports as well. More rumors were spread throughout the school saying that Mitsuru had taken a picture of the ghost at the Daimatsu building. Wataru was hoping to meet him at school to ask about it, but Mitsuru was assigned to another class. Mitsuru seems to be drawn to the Daimatsu Building and this time when he goes, he gets a glimpse of someone dressed as a wizard walking up the staircase. After he gets home, he finds that there seems to be trouble brewing between his mother and father.  He learns that his parents are getting a divorce and Wataru’s world is shattering around him. 

Wataru doesn’t know who he could talk to about what he saw but decides it would be best to tell his uncle who feels quite at ease with. Uncle Lou, as Wataru calls him, takes Wataru back to the Daimatsu Building and checks the stairs again. Although, he doesn’t see a wizard, he sees bright lights emanating from what looks like a gate. This is where the real adventure begins. 

Wataru finds himself in another world. A world called Vision. He is told that in this world, he can change his destiny. He is told that he must collect five gemstones before going to the Tower of Destiny and will earn a chance to talk to the Goddess of Vision who can grant him his one true wish. What will Wataru wish for. Will his family become as one again? What of the friends he has made in Vision? Brave Story has also won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for the publisher in 2008. The Batchelder Award being an award given to publishers for children’s literature translated into the English language. ~Ernie Hoyt

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton)

Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Rawalpindi - currently these cities in Pakistan have been described as strongholds of the Taliban and also as havens for terrorists. However, the short stories collected in this book take place long before the Taliban came to power. The stories are about tradition, class struggle and social change in Pakistani life. Most of the stories are set in the towns of Lahore or Islamabad. The writer himself was brought up in Lahore and currently lives on a farm in the southern Punjab region.

This is a collection of previously published short stories compiled into one book. They are drawn from a vast array of literary journals and magazines such as the New Yorker, Granta and Zoetrope: All Story. One of stories, “Nawabdin Electrician” was included in “Best American Short Stories 2008”. There are a total of eight stories starting with the previously mentioned “Nawabdin Electrician”. Also included are “Saleema”, “Provide, Provide”, “About a Burning Girl”, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”, “Our Lady of Paris”, “Lily”, and “A Spoiled Man”.

In “Nawabdin Electrician”, a lower class man with twelve daughters and one son is a mechanic and an electrician who works for a wealthy landowner named K.K. Harouni. Nawab takes care of the man’s seventeen tube wells located on his property. He goes from one well to another by bicycle. He talks his patron into providing him with a motorcycle to do his job more efficiently. Once Nawab is in possession of the motorcycle, it also raises his status in the eyes of his peers. However, it also leads to his near death as he is nearly robbed of his prized possession, even getting shot in the process.

In “Saleema”, we find that she works as a maid, is married, but is also sleeping with Hassan the cookSaleema and the cook, Hassan work for K.K. Harouni. She uses sex to advance her station in life and unexpectedly falls in love with one of the other servants, the driver, Rafik. Saleema gets pregnant by Rafik, although he is married as well. But the fountain of wealth, K.K. Harouni passes. As Hassan and Rafik had been in service to Harouni for a number of years, they would be sent to a different house in Islamabad. Saleema finds a job at another house, friends of Harouni, who took her in just because she worked at his house. But in the end, she loses her job, she starts taking drugs she once despised, leaves her husband, and ends up on the street begging with her son. Soon enough she dies and her son is left begging in the streets becoming what is known as “one of the sparrows of Lahore.”

Onto “Provide, Provide”, we learn about K.K. Harouni and how he was born into a rich family. As he tries to keep up appearances to compete with the new breed of Pakistani industrialist, he would sell vast amounts of land he owns and sink the money into factories; however, the more he sinks into the factories, the more they seemed to decline until his bankers advised him to close. While Harouni was spending less time at his family home in the southern area of Punjab, he left that up to his manager, one Chaudrey Nabi Baksh Jaglani who has ideas of his own.

The characters in the five remaining stories are related to the central character of K.K. Harouni as if part of one long and continuing soap opera. The stories provide us with a detailed look into the social strata of Pakistani life with the caste system derived from India, ever strong and present. Once you’ve completed the book, you find yourself wanting more. To see what has become of some of the newer characters and to see what has happened to the ones you have already become familiar with. The book provides everything you can hope for - love, romance, betrayal, loyalty, and the interrelationships between all the characters. It’s a book you won’t want to put down.

The Mindful Moment by Tim Page (Thames & Hudson)

British photographer Tim Page was still in his teens when he arrived in Southeast Asia and was only twenty when United Press International sent him to Saigon as a war photographer in 1965. He remained in Vietnam for four years, leaving only after shrapnel from an exploded land mine “had taken away the right side of my skull.” as Page casually puts it. “On the chopper to the field hospital at Long Bin, my heart had been jump-started three times.”

Page didn’t go back to Vietnam until 1980, when the Observer hired him to accompany the first British tour group to make a post-war excursion,  landing in Hanoi and moving through the south. He returned throughout the ‘80s, traveling through Vietnam and into Cambodia, taking photos for two books, Nam and Ten Years After. With photographer Horst Faas, he created Requiem: By the Photographers who Died in Vietnam and Indochina, which is both a book and a photography exhibit that now hangs in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and includes the work of North Vietnamese combat photographers. 

The Mindful Moment is a collage of words and photographs that tumble into sight the way memories emerge in the mind,  without regard for chronology or theme. Moving through this gives the feeling of sitting in a room with Page as he pulls out random photographs and tells stories. The disjointed quality of the book adds to its power; past and present exist side by side with no artificial divisions. 

At the outset Page honors the “two-thousand year struggle to maintain a homogeneous national identity” that culminated in the Vietnam War, then mourns the changes brought to that country by consumerism, “which has done more to despoil the country’s social harmony than the decade-long war.” If The Mindful Moment has a theme, this would be it. Teenagers wearing jeans on shining new motorcycles and smiling market vendors in 1990’s Hanoi clash against the calm faces of captured Viet Cong suspects in 1969 and the stark portrait of a woman’s face of quiet rage, watching with her children as a hovercraft destroys their home in 1966. Children in Saigon, poor but whole, all of their limbs intact, contrast savagely with babies who were born with cruel defects, physical and mental, caused by Agent Orange.

Page captures the spirituality that runs through Vietnamese life with photographs of funerals, during wartime and in peace. He pays homage to the leader of the “Coconut Daoists,” who led his followers in prayers for peace “around the clock and thoroughout the year,” on Peace Island, while five hundred meters away gunships and bombers did their fatal work. When Page returned to this place after the war, it had become a tourist attraction, “stripped of any dignity.”

“The war,” Page says, “is hard to remember...it was fun, it was a thrill, it was simply terrifying.” Included in the 136 photographs of The Mindful Moment is one taken by another photographer in 1965 during the battle of Chu Phong Mountain. A young man stares from the frame, his face inscrutable, his eyes focused beyond the photographer upon something invisible. It’s Tim Page at twenty during his first year in Vietnam, interrupted for a minute or two while doing his work. As The Mindful Moment shows, he’s never stopped working. ~Janet Brown

Burial in the Clouds by Hiroyuki Agawa (Tuttle Publishing)

This original title of this book is Kumo no Bohyo and was first published in Japanese in 1956 by Shinchosha. It was translated into English by Teruyo Shimizu in 2006. The story is set at the height of World War II during Japan’s military expansion. Although the story is fiction, it is written in a diary-form by a young Japanese college student, Jiro Yoshino, who was inducted into the Japanese Imperial Navy. 

Jiro starts writing his diary from the first Sunday after joining the Navy. He is sent to the Otake Naval Barracks in Hiroshima Prefecture. We follow his progress from being labeled as flight-worthy for pilot training before his official enlistment which will determine the course of his military career. He knows that he will be chosen as a member of the tokko-tai which is the shortened form of tokubetsu kougeki tai and translates into English as the “Special Attack Force”. They are more commonly known to Americans as kamikaze which translates to “Divine Wind”.

Jiro writes and lets us know that the Student Reserves are separated by the schools they attended such as Waseda Division and the Tokyo University Division. He also notices that there are divisions from Chuo University, Hiroshima Higher Normal School, and of course his own school, Kyoto University. Jiro also finds that three of his good friends are here which gives him a sense of calmness. 

Jiro gives us a first-hand account of his training. Starting off with his taking of the Student Reserve Officer Examination. We follow his progress from those humble beginnings to choosing to become a pilot. He writes about the many hardships throughout his training, including getting accustomed to Navy life, flight training on planes that use a highly volatile alcohol mixed fuel and he also voices his doubts about Japan winning the war.

However, I get a sense of Jiro’s change of attitude after a few months in the navy. Some of his first entries are about his lack of courage and his questioning of the righteousness of the war. But in his later entries, he begins to believe in the ideology that he must be willing to die to protect his country. He even writes, “I must sink all impertinent thoughts to the bottom of my mind and try to become a man.” 

As the war progresses and fuel becomes a valuable commodity, the Student Reserves are grounded and must practice maneuvers on the ground simulating flying in the air, while the Naval Academy graduates continue to be able to practice in the air. But when it's time to set out against the enemies, the Student Reserves are the first to be called upon while Academy graduates “..stay behind on the pretext that they have to conserve their crews and aircraft.” 

This is a powerful novel about war and sacrifice. I couldn’t help feeling sadness as I read Jiro’s last two entries - his “farewell notes” knowing full well he would not be returning from this last sortie. Sometimes I forget the book is fiction as Jiro’s last letters are dated July, 1945 - just one month before the end of the war. This books spawned mixed feelings in me as quite a few years ago, I went to the War Memorial Museum at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The shrine that is at the heart of controversy whenever a sitting Prime Minister visits it because this is the shrine where fourteen Class “A” war criminals are enshrined. On the day I went, there was a special exhibition of the Tokko-tai. Real final letters to family, friends, and loved one from young kamikaze pilots. I was able to read a few with my still limited knowledge of kanji characters. Trying to put myself in their place, thinking what would my final words be if I knew I was flying to my death, never to return. ~Ernie Hoyt

Totto-chan : The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (Kodansha)

This is an autobiographical account of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, one of Japan’s most popular television talk show hosts. The story is about her first two years at an elementary school called Tomoe Gakuen which was established in 1937 but was burned down in 1945 at the end of the Second World War. The story is told in the third person: however, it is not only the story of her elementary school years, but also focuses on her teacher, Sosaku Kobayashi. For Kuroyanagi, whose nickname was Totto-chan as child, it wasn’t until she reached adulthood that she understood the lessons that were taught by Kobayashi at Tomoe. What at first seemed like happy childhood memories turned out to be valuable life lessons.

Kuroyanagi starts off her semi-memoir with the memory of being taken to a new school with her mother not realizing how worried her mother was. The reason why her mother was so worried was “although Totto-chan had only just started school, she had already been expelled. Fancy being expelled from the first grade!”

The school itself was unusual and when Totto-chan saw it for the first time she couldn’t believe her eyes. The first thing that caught her eye was the gates of the school. At her previous school, as with most schools in Japan, the gates would be made of concrete pillars with a plaque of the name of the school on it. At Tomoe Gakuen, there gate consisted of two poles with leaves and twigs still on them. What was more amazing was the school itself. Classes were held in abandoned railway cars. 

Once Totto-chan saw the “train” school, she ran towards it and was about to go into one of the classrooms when her mother caught up with her and said to her, “You can’t go in yet.” “The cars are classrooms and you haven’t been accepted here yet.” She was told that they would first have to see the headmaster and talk to him. 

The headmaster, Sosaku Kobayashi, is the man who changed the course of Kuroyanagi’s life. In the postscript following the main story, Kuroyanagi gives a brief explanation of Kobayashi’s teaching method. Kuroyanagi says, “He believed all children are born with an innate good nature, which can be easily damaged by their environment and the wrong adult influences.” She goes on to say, “His aim was to uncover their “good nature” and develop it, so that the children would grow into people with individuality.”

Once the headmaster and Totto-chan are alone, the headmaster says to Totto-chan, “Now then, tell me all about yourself. Tell me anything at all you want to talk about.” So Totto-chan talks about the train she took to get here, wanting to become a ticket-collector, how pretty her homeroom teacher was at her previous school. The headmaster let Totto-chan talk and talk until Totto-chan herself ran out of things to say. What Totto-chan didn’t realize as she couldn’t tell time yet was that it was time for lunch. She and her mother came to the school at 8am and it was now noon. This seven year old talked to the headmaster for four hours straight. This was the first time an adult sat and listened to her and didn’t fain boredom or restlessness. After their conversation, the headmaster said to Totto-chan, “Well, now you’re a pupil of this school.” 

This is not just an entertaining account of one celebrity’s childhood but its also an hommage to her teacher and founder of Tomoe Gakuen, Sosaku Kobayashi. The episodes Kuroyanagi reminisces about are entertaining and funny but also fills me with sadness, especially on reading about the destruction of the school during the fire-bombing of Tokyo. It is no wonder that Ministry of Education has formally approved its usage in Japanese schools even today! ~Ernie Hoyt

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (Vintage)

Haruki Murakami is one of the most well-known writers in Japan and internationally. His books have been translated into over fifty languages and has gone on to become bestsellers in his home country and abroad. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature but hasn’t won it...yet. He has won many other awards including the World Fantasy Award, the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. 

In this story, set in Nagoya in contemporary Japan, Tsukuru Tazaki thinks about his four closest friends he had in high school. Two boys and two girls. It was by coincidence that his friend’s names all contained a color in their name. The boys’ last names were Akamatsu which translates to “Red Pine” and Oumi which translates to “blue sea”. The girls’ last names were Shirane which translates to “white root” and Kurono which translates to “black field”. Tazaki was the only name that didn’t have a color in its meaning  It wasn’t long before the friends used colors as their nicknames - Aka (red) and Ao (blue) and the girls were Shiro (white) and Kuro (black). 

The story opens with Tsukuru thinking about death and ending his life. He has been having these thoughts since July of his sophomore year at college and for five months that’s all he could think about. Although, he constantly thought of death, he never considered committing suicide. However, the question remains is why has Tsukuru reached this level of depression.

It all goes back to his four friends in high school. They all come from similar backgrounds and the five friends were all classmates at the same high school in a suburb of Nagoya. During summer vacation of the first year of high school they all did volunteer work at the same place and became fast friends. The volunteer work started as a social studies assignment but even after the first summer ended, the five friends continued to their volunteer services. They also hung out with each other going hiking together, playing tennis or just hung out some place and talked for hours on end. Things seemed ideal and all five hoped their friendship would continue after graduating high school. 

So what led Tsukuru to his current situation? Tsukuru was the only one of the five friends to leave Nagoya after graduating high school. He went to Tokyo to study engineering because it was his dream to build railway stations. He would meet up with everybody when he returned during the holidays. Then one day, his four closest friends said that they did not want to see him or talk with him, ever again. No reason, no explanation. He was just cut off from group just like that. 

Since that day, Tsukuru finds it difficult to have any long-lasting relationships or any connections with anyone. Until he meets a woman named Sara. It is Sara who says it’s time for Tsukuru to confront his friends and find out the truth about what happened that day and why they treated him as they did. It has been sixteen years since he has spoken to any of them but he sets out on a journey to clear his mind once and for all. He may not like what he finds but it is something he is determined to do.

You cannot help but be taken in my Tsukuru’s predicament and I find myself also wanting to find out the truth. This is one of the books that is hard to put down. Part mystery, part romance and definitely a journey of self-discovery. You may see your friends in another light and ask yourself, what would you do if you were in Tsukuru’s shoes. ~Ernie Hoyt