Showing 1 - 3 of 3
From Edo to Edinburgh
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 14/03/2026
» The opera based on the long and industrious life of Japanese print master Katsushika Hokusai had its world premiere in Glasgow and travelled to Edinburgh for two consecutive nights last month. I braved the strong winds of the Edinburgh evening to watch The Great Wave at the Festival Theatre on its last day.
A shady underworld
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 03/05/2019
» We, The Survivors, the fourth novel by the Malaysian-British Tash Aw, is a compelling account of the life of a working-class lad named Lee Hock Lye, or known among friends as Ah Hock. It's a vivid tale of an imaginative young man with ideas of setting foot in a better place than a ramshackle village where livelihood depends on fishing and harvesting cockles from the polluted mudflats. Ah Hock isn't an angry young man, nor is he an idler who accepts whatever comes his way as fate. He tries hard with life, changing numbers of jobs to make ends meet, hoping one day he'd move to settle down with a house and family in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or even farther afield. The world that he inhabits, however, is a microcosm of the much larger equilibrium, where society permits a select few to climb the ladder, and the majority -- the ilk of Ah Hock -- remains stuck in poverty, leading a life that's going nowhere.
Overcoming the racial divide
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 26/04/2018
» Shakespeare writes in The Winter's Tale that "there were no age between 10 and three-and-20, or that youth would sleep out the rest". Adolescence, or the marked "teenage years", encompass elements of biological growth and major social transformation, both of which are decidedly products of nature and culture. The time between youth and maturity can be sorrowful, hard, fun, sad and amazing. It never fails to inspire writers of fiction, to attempt to unravel the complexities of this concept of life. Charting into the unknown is always a favourite subject of those who write.