Bøker utgitt av Eastbridge Books

Kondo the Barbarian is a gripping and revealing account of the colonial Japanese era in Taiwan, focusing on the Musha Rebellion and its brutal suppression by the Japanese military.

"Lucid, learned, and superbly translated, Kondo the Barbarian is an indispensable source for those interested in Taiwan's colonial history." -Leo T.S. ChingKondo the Barbarian is a gripping and revealing account of the colonial Japanese era in Taiwan, focusing on the Musha Rebellion and its brutal suppression by the Japanese military. The book presents the translated account of Kond¿ Katsusabur¿, a Japanese adventurer who married into an indigenous Taiwanese family. Kond¿'s journals offer an intimate and personal perspective on the events, though they can also be unreliable and prone to sensationalism.To help readers navigate Kond¿'s account, Barclay has provided a deeply-researched introduction, extensive notes, and context essential to understanding what really happened during the Musha Rebellion. The book sheds light on the cultural clashes and sporadic violence that characterized Taiwan during this period. Through the writing of Kond¿, interpreted and contextualized by Barclay, readers gain insight into the complexities of colonialism, imperialism, and indigenous resistance.The Musha Rebellion was a pivotal moment in the relationship between the indigenous people and the Japanese colonial government. In 1930, after years of oppression, the Seediq people of central Taiwan, led by Mona Rudao, attacked a gathering of Japanese people at a local school, slaughtering over one hundred men, women, and children. The Japanese military responded with overwhelming force, employing tactics including poison gas, artillery, and aerial bombardment to quell the rebellion.Barclay's book offers a fresh and engaging perspective on a tragic chapter in Taiwan's past, and the notes and context provided help readers understand the complexities of the events. The book is an important addition to the growing body of literature on Taiwan's history, and it underscores the power of personal narratives to illuminate broader historical themes. Kondo the Barbarian is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Taiwan, the contradictions of colonialism, and the challenges of interpreting personal accounts of historical events.

Ripped away from all he had known, he fought for a new life. Now he must fight for his new family.In 53 B.C. Roman soldier Manius Titinius falls captive to a warband of Xiongnu, nomadic horsemen who rule the seas of grass between the Gobi Desert and Mountains of Heaven. His forced march to the east plunges him into a new world of wonder and peril. Manius has only his fighting spirit and faith in Fortuna, goddess of luck, to aid him in a faraway land: China.Manius rots in the Xiongnu slave camp. Until, with the help of a Chinese family, he escapes. In their frontier village he grapples with the language and learns a new way of life. Then his former captors track him down and attack. Will Fortuna stand with Manius through the siege? Will the proud Roman forge a Chinese destiny? Can he ever find his way home?From windswept valleys to bustling cultural crossroads ... from daring rescue missions to the daily struggle for survival on the borderlands ... Silk Road Centurion opens a gateway to an ancient realm of romance, discovery and adventure."Fortuna, be with me. May I come before you with bloodied hands."

New Year fireworks illuminate the Beijing night, but all twenty-year-old Panzi can think about is the mysterious former classmate who has just burst back into his life. Impulsive, spontaneous, and full of compassion, Xiao Song is like no one he has ever known - the first person who has made Panzi feel whole since his father's suicide.Across town and a thousand social strata away, the son of Beijing's vice mayor and his gilded friends tear through the night in a cherry-red Ferrari, swerving off the road and into Xiao Song's life. Panzi rushes to the scene just as a barely conscious Xiao Song is whisked away and evidence of the crash scrubbed out of existence.The police stonewall Panzi. His mother tells him to let sleeping dogs lie. Desperate and unwilling to give up, he enlists a hard-nosed trainee journalist and a loser expat English teacher in his search. They comb Beijing - from homeless shelters to gaudy faux-French penthouses - inching closer to the truth about Xiao Song, the crash, and the soul of the city itself.

In this old China tale like no other, Englishman Charles Mason tells of his doomed attempt to overthrow the Qing dynasty.Lawrence of Arabia famously wrote that, "All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men," for they may act upon their dreams. Such a man was young Charles Mason, who, in the late 1880s, secured a job with China's British-run Imperial Maritime Customs Service at a river port. Here the glamor and adventure of exotic China met the reality of tedious paperwork, alcoholism, petty squabbles, and sordid sexual encounters. It was a test of character, and one which Mason would fail. From the boredom, and his connections with a secret society, a fantasy emerged of setting himself up as the "King of China." In 1891 he secured men and arms to launch his revolt. Mason was a much better writer than he was a revolutionary, and in mesmerising, melodramatic prose of sometimes borderline sanity, he recounts the failed insurrection from inspiration to his dramatic trial and the aftermath. The Chinese Confessions was originally published in 1924. In this reissue, vital background and biographical information is given in an introduction by David Leffman, a travel writer and the author of The Mercenary Mandarin, a biography of the British adventurer William Mesny.

An epic thriller set in India during the last days of the British Raj.India Be Damned traces the fate of a group of Indians and foreigners who are ripped from their moorings by the first murderous months of independence, their long-held certainties shattered.Vandana Singh shook a cigarette from her bag, leaned into the candle flame and exhaled a long plume of smoke. "Don't be silly, Fred," she said. "Where does 'silly' come into it?" "Fred dear, you're British. The Raj is dying on its feet." "Why is this a problem?" "You people are in power," she explained gently. "Outrageous though it seems, you've been in power here for centuries. What do you imagine your life here would be like if you weren't?" He furrowed his brow. Of course the British were leaving. Their departure was long overdue. But life - his own charmed life - would go on much as before, wouldn't it?As the independence deadline approaches, Britain plays a wild card, appointing world-famous war hero Lord Mountbatten the last Viceroy. "Dickie" and his socialist wife Edwina imbue the end of empire with their legendary panache, and for foreign journalists and freedom fighters alike it's a dazzling show. But inscrutably, Mountbatten decides to rush the process to its conclusion - damning India to a baptism of blood.India Be Damned is a gripping tale of love and paranoia, hope and despair, steeped in the flavours of the subcontinent. Peter Popham's debut novel deftly draws the reader on, ratcheting the tension right up to the shocking conclusion.

In 1884 Jenichiro Oyabe left his father's house in Akita, in the north of Japan's largest island, Honshu. An unremarkable young man, Oyabe was to embark on a remarkable journey spanning Ainu lands in Hokkaido, the Russian Far East, Hawaii (at that point still an independent kingdom), Polynesia, the Ryukyus, and China. A Christian convert, Oyabe then settled in the United States to study first agriculture, and then theology.His account of his journey and time in America are fascinating to read today for the insight of a citizen of a rapidly-modernizing Japan into the times he was living in. He was one of the first Japanese people to study at a historically Black college (Howard University, in Washington, D.C.). After a tour in Europe he returned to the States, moving to Yale University, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1895.A Japanese Robinson Crusoe mixes humor, pathos, blind optimism, and penetrating insight. Oyabe initially saw the United States as the light of civilization, but his view grows more complex and nuanced as his life there goes on. His reflections on religion, racism (something he was both a victim and a perpetrator of), and the differences between Japan and America are what make this book worthy of reissue, and of the reader's time.