Launch of Asian Review of Books

Peter Gordon and Mark Clifford, creators of of the new Asian Review of Books will speak at Asia Society New York.

In 2000, Peter Gordon, an American living in Hong Kong, launched the Asian Review of Books as an online periodical to bring more news of Asian authors and books to English-language audiences worldwide, a development that coincided with his involvement in establishing the Hong Kong Literary Festival and, later, the Man Asian Literary Prize, which he chaired for the Prize's first two years.

Since then the role of Asia's emerging economies in helping the world to blunt the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008 definitively marked the arrival of the Asian Century. But less noticed has been the increasing importance of Asian authors and thinkers to the increasingly worldwide conversation that will shape the future of globalization and modernity. These writers are more apt than any previous generation to live and work on more than one continent and to embody an unprecedented cosmopolitanism that will change how we think about countries and cultures. They also represent the fact that the world is no longer simply a Euro-American discussion.

Peter Gordon and Mark Clifford, former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, joined by a new editorial board consisting of Pankaj Mishra, Ha Jin, Suketu Mehta and Qiu Xiaolong, invite leading Asian writers and intellectuals to reflect on these profound developments. It will also be a lively compendium of the best new writing from and about Asia.

Please join Suketu Mehta, Peter Gordon, and Mark Clifford at Asia Society New York for a celebration of the new Asian Review of Books.

Discussion followed by a reception.