The Asian Review has achieved a remarkable milestone, ascending from 13th position in 2023 to 10th in Feedspot’s global literary magazine rankings. Competing amongst 2,500 publications worldwide, this achievement reflects genuine reader engagement from 40 million monthly visitors across 195 countries, establishing the magazine as Asia’s premier literary voice.
Recognising publishers as by-products of writers’ work—as vessels for creative distribution rather than sources of creative legitimacy—would transform Sri Lanka’s literary landscape for the better. It would foster more equitable partnerships, diversify published voices, and ultimately enrich the country’s literary culture.
The Tanzanian-born British novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” crafts narratives that deftly navigate the complex terrain of displacement, cultural identity, and the lingering shadows of empire.
In recent decades, Korean literature has emerged from relative obscurity to claim its rightful place on the world stage, bringing with it distinctive narrative approaches, thematic concerns, and aesthetic sensibilities that have significantly expanded the palette of global literature
The Asian Book Eye is committed to amplifying the voices that have been marginalised, overlooked, or deliberately silenced across the vast tapestry of Asian literary communities, from South Asian powerhouses to East Asian markets, from Southeast Asian emerging voices to Central Asian storytellers whose narratives rarely cross borders.
Paul Lynch occupies a singular position in contemporary Irish literature—a writer who has consistently pushed against the boundaries of conventional storytelling to excavate the darkest corners of human experience. His 2023 Booker Prize victory for Prophet Song represents acknowledgement of a literary project building momentum for over a decade.
‘Contours of Him’ brings remarkable depth to our understanding of men and their bodies, helping to redefine masculinity in ways that are more compassionate, complex, and authentic. By inviting readers into intimate relationships with the physical male form as experienced across diverse cultures, this anthology advances our collective conversation about gender and embodiment
The fact that Café Europa was born during the war is telling. Poetry and war should walk separate paths. Yet it is from their intersection that the word-in-action, or poesis, arises. The Greek root of this word is close to the Sanskrit term for compassion – karuna.
When you are fighting for livelihood and life, the language and idioms acceptable are those used by power structures and governments.
The title Anatta, a Pali word meaning “not-self,” points towards a central theme in the anthology: the impermanence of all things, including the self. Buddhist philosophy challenges the notion of a fixed, unchanging self. Anatta proposes instead a fluid, ever-changing entity, constantly shaped by our experience as a body-mind (Nama-Tula) and the world in which it lives.
There is such a clichéd romance in the idea of being an artist’s model. All these women who made it to eternity by posing for the greats. In reality, there was nothing romantic about it. It was tedious and demanding. The body begins to ache from the effort to keep still. The face stiffens from the attempt to preserve the same expression.
Perhaps most significantly, physical books offer a rare commodity in contemporary life: genuine escape from digital surveillance and commercial imperatives. Unlike e-readers that track reading habits, collect data, and interrupt with advertisements or notifications, paper books provide an untraceable, unmonitored intellectual refuge.
I sat in the graveyard, merging effortlessly in the background. When you have crossed your seventies, and you have mastered the art of sitting quietly without taking much interest in your surroundings, letting the hours slip away, it is easier to overlook you. In my case, I was worried the occasional visitor to the graveyard might think I was one of the inhabitants, taking a stroll to free their legs, cramped from lying in the grave for too long!
This is not about teaching her how to walk. This is about cheering her to run in life’s race. Failure isn’t an option, neither for me nor for her, because her accomplishments ultimately become my progress report. Consequently, just like the vast majority of the Singaporean parent population, I interfere unapologetically in my child’s education.
The Asian Journal of Literature is an annual publication by The Asian Group, the published edition of The Asian Journal, which is located in Gargaon, India. The Asian Journal offers two distinct editions: one for Literature and another for Science. The Journal for literature is now open for submissions.
Pulau Pulau was a matchmaking initiative created for writers by writers to find a writing partner. The aim of the project was finding a writing partner to co-write something together that goes beyond what either could create on their own. It was organised by the archipelago collective, a transnational community of writers and artists. From across the world approx. 80+ writers have participated from 30+ different countries whose are generally writes in 50+ different languages.
The future belongs to those who can integrate the digital fluency of Generation Z with the deep reading capacities of previous generations. In that integration lies our best hope for citizens capable of both technological innovation and ethical wisdom—the combination our unstable world most desperately needs.
In Delhi, there lived a critic- his name was Venkat Swaminathan. I was in touch with him from the time I first moved to Delhi in 1978 until 1982. In 1979, he sublet a room in his house to me. Generally, I don’t ask anyone the usual ‘Indian’ questions, such as, where they work, if they are married, how many kids they have, or whether they own or rent their house.
” In an era when gadgets and media are conspiring to shorten the attention spans of readers, turning human beings into cyborgs, or even worse- living, breathing AI models, I see the act of sitting in your favorite spot with your favorite beverage and sinking into your book as an act of silent rebellion. “
‘Brussels, Naked’ is an experimental novel in the form of twelve interconnected novellas, each named after municipalities or neighbourhoods in Brussels, and each with a different narrator. It covers a period of fifteen years and is built around three main arcs: the life of Iris, Brussels itself as a protagonist and the EU crises, captured in the stories of ordinary people.
The Asian Review 