Richard Cockett
Ditching Democracy
Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia
By Michael Vatikiotis
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 336pp £20 order from our bookshop
The sprawling, archipelagic region of Southeast Asia usually receives more attention from tourists and beach bums than political scientists and commentators. Despite the fact that it is the most economically dynamic area in the world, is home to about 630 million people and contains the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, it is often overlooked in favour of its outsized neighbours, China and India. Even South Korea prompts more interest, if only because it is always on the verge of being eviscerated by North Korea.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties
'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress