Diary: Hot Job Opens Up

AN INCREDIBLY HOT JOB has opened up for a writer in Asia.

            The Asia Literary Review is being expanded and is looking for a full-time managing editor. It’s an absolutely brilliant job.

            The winning candidate will be paid a salary to liaise with authors of excellent new works and work with a great team to pull together volumes of world-class writing.

            He or she will get an office in Central, the business district of Hong Kong. They’ll be part of a project that is going to really go places. There are amazing things planned.

            The Asia Literary Review, in its various incarnations, has published many of the finest writers on the planet: Seamus Heaney, David Mitchell, Thomas Keneally, Romesh Gunasekera, Hanif Kureishi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Yu Hua, Hsu-Ming Teo, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Yasmina Khadra, Chetan Bhagat, Hwee Hwee Tan, Alex Kuo, William Dalrymple, Pico Iyer and many more.

            Familiarity with Asian culture and languages is a bonus, but not essential.

            Interested? Send your CV to cathleen.wu@crosby.com

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HEADLINE in the South China Morning Post: “London’s Iconic Taxis May Soon Cruise Hong Kong Streets”.
           Er, if they are London’s iconic taxis, why do we want them here? I think someone hasn’t really thought this through.
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IN TERMS OF geopolitical value for money, Paul Ulrich’s new book Saudi Match Point has it all: Al-Qaeda, the Chinese government, oil wars, a high level US conspiracy, a hostage crisis and the battle between radical Islam and modern mores. Paul's based in Hong Kong.

          The plot: The US government uses a hostage crisis as a pretext for invading Saudi Arabia and taking control of the oil fields. But a young China expert learns the truth -- and the world’s two most assertive superpowers battle for supremacy. Sounds all too believable.
            Paul: my most recent novel, The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics, is about a Uyghur minority man who goes to the west, learns about human rights, and then returns to China to fight for his people. Earlier this week, the press reported the tale of the sentencing of a Uyghur man who moved to the west, learned about human rights, and returned to China to fight for his people.
            Today’s novels: tomorrow’s headlines.

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TWO RARE sturgeons were released into the Yangtze River in China this week to boost the number of rare fish in the water, Xinhua reported. The fish carried tiny chips so scientists can track them.
           What's the betting that a Yangtze riverside restaurant will soon have sturgeon on its menu -- I can see the listing now: "Fish and Chips".
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ALMOST EVERY NEWS outlet in the world has drawn comparisons between the small yacht found drifting in Australian waters a few days ago and the Mary Celeste. The yacht was abandoned, its three crew missing, and on the table a laptop was running and food and drink were awaiting diners.

            There are similarities between that story and the Mary Celeste, which was found drifting off the coast of Portugal with its ten-man passenger list missing in the 1800s.
            But the oft-quoted details about “food being on the table” of the Mary Celeste dining room ready to eat are not true. Those little ghostly touches actually come from an Arthur Conan-Doyle story based on the discovery.

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I FIND IT totally outrageous that people are criticizing the US gun ownership rules in the wake of the Virginia Tech murders. Do you realize that individuals are only allowed to purchase one handgun a month? That means that a family of five would take all of two years to build up an arsenal of 120 weapons. For some people, that’s hardship, man.

Comments

[red reader]

I like the new column style, very cool