New Books Network

'Unearthed in a clear-out, a picture calendar she’s kept– hoarding, I’ve learnt, is a mark of the emigrant –across continents and time.'So begins Sarah Howe’s extraordinary new collection, Foretokens, returning to the riddle of belonging she explored in her award-winning debut, Loop of Jade. At the heart is her own mother’s clouded past: abandoned as a baby and taken in, at the turbulent dawn of Communist China, by a woman with her own hidden motives. Now a mother herself, Howe finds herself re-examining this unreliable narrative with fresh sight. Sifting through her own history, the poet asks, how can a new generation transform a shattered inheritance? And what is lost and gained in the pursuit?‘From the other side of ruin / we found safe passage’, Howe writes in these spectacular poems of emotional heft and quickening wit, their voice salvaged from the fragments of a former self. Foretokens is a monumental work of survival and creation, turning over what is left behind as it strikes out towards astonishing new vistas.

Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. She is currently the Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
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Veins of Influence: Colonial Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in early Photographs and Collections by Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra (Neptune Publications, 2023) is a pioneering monograph that brings a rich array of early images (specifically of Sri Lanka (Ceylon)) into the global discourse of photography, pairing a striking lens of visual appreciation with distinctly humanizing perspectives. In the context of colonial photography, “veins of influence” delineates the circulatory pathways through which images operate, tracing not only their material production and dissemination, but also the curatorial, creative, cultural, epistemic narratives they generate across time.

The over 450 images featured are from the: Royal Collection Trust; Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford; Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge University; Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Rothschild Archives and, also by the famed Victorian photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. (A little known fact is that Cameron spent the last 4 years of life in Ceylon and died there.)

In addition to these UK collections, this publication includes early photographs from important local family collections and period publications. The collections are mainly those of influencers and the writing considers images by both studio photographers and hobbyists, for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

This seminal publication is for general audiences and specialists. Ganendra’s unusual analysis of these collections adds another layer of understanding of the viewing and imaging of Ceylon specifically, importantly also offering another approach to the understanding of colonial images generally.

Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra’s impact on cultural development has been defined by nearly three decades of cultural programming including exhibition and scholarship, with notable focus on Sri Lanka. Ganendra is Sri Lankan born and lives in Malaysia. She read law at Cambridge University (1987) and qualified as a Barrister and New York Attorney. She was the first Sri Lankan specialist to be appointed to the Tate Gallery (UK) Acquisitions Committee (SAAC) and has served on numerous judging panels including for the Commonwealth Arts Award and as a nominator for the Sovereign Art Prize and Aga Khan Architecture Awards. She was most recently a Chevening Fellow at Oxford and has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, including at: the History of Art Department, St. Catherine s College and the Pitt Rivers Museum. She was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (Vatican) in 2019.
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The Politics of Failed Policies (Oxford UP, 2025) examines how the interplay of politics and data affects when failed policies get recognized. It shows how compelling data and analysis is an important political tool for highlighting failure. Importantly, the research demonstrates how data and analysis themselves are the products of political processes and reflections of those in power. Using case studies from education and juvenile criminal justice and tax policy, the book makes a theoretical contribution to the study of policymaking, state politics, and the role of knowledge and information in contemporary American politics.
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Societal grand challenges have taken a toll on humanity, which finds itself at a crossroads. The concentration of wealth and economic inequality, the dominance of Big Tech firms, the loss of privacy and free choice, and the overconsumption and abuse of natural resources have been reinforced by globalization. Regulation, legislation, international treaties, and government and corporate policies have fallen short of offering sufficient remedies. The Cooperative Economy: A Solution for Society(Routledge, 2023) offers a bold solution: a new economic system, free from the design flaws that have contributed to these societal grand challenges. The cooperative economy is an ethical community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints. The book explains how this new system uses design principles to promote the self-sufficiency of communities, sustainability, and entrepreneurship while limiting overconsumption and excessive profit-making. It enhances economic equality by leveraging price subsidization and by restricting salary differences. Please become involved. If interested it what a cooperative economy can offer and what role you can play in it, go to the book’s website here.
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Amy Chavez talks with Robert Whiting about his recently released book Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies: The Outsiders who Shaped Modern Japan (Tuttle, 2024).

Bob talks about several colorful characters who populated Tokyo in the 60s and 70s, including strong women such like Australian bar hostess Maggie, who became famous for using scissors to cut off the neckties of customers, and a female yakuza gangster who carried a revolver in her purse. And if you think Japan doesn’t have a drug problem, think again. Whiting talks about North Korean drug-smuggling and its contribution to a surging number of meth users in the country. Lastly, while most tourists to Japan can’t help but be impressed by Japanese taxi drivers who wear white gloves and offer impeccably polite service, things weren’t always so good when hailing a cab in Japan. In fact, drivers used to be rude, dirty and reportedly, the job was so loathsome that Japanese wives were embarrassed to tell people their husbands were taxi drivers! As Whiting tells us, that all changed with the MK Taxi company, started by a Korean determined to put a new face on ride hailing.

Listen to our previous BOA podcast 11: Robert Whiting talks Baseball and Tokyo Junkie, or read a review of his memoir Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights, Back Alleys and Baseball (Stone Bridge Press, 2021)
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