Asia Audiobooks | History

From Genghis Khan to Tamerlane: The Reawakening of Mongol Asia

An epic account of how a new world order under Tamerlane was born out of the decline of the Mongol Empire By the mid-fourteenth century, the world empire founded by Genghis Khan was in crisis. The Mongol Ilkhanate had ended in Iran and Iraq, China's Mongol rulers were threatened by the native Ming, and the Golden Horde and the Central Asian Mongols were prey to internal discord. Into this void moved the warlord Tamerlane, the last major conqueror to emerge from Inner Asia. In this authoritative account, Peter Jackson traces Tamerlane's rise to power against the backdrop of the decline of Mongol rule. Jackson argues that Tamerlane, a keen exponent of Mongol custom and tradition, operated in Genghis Khan's shadow and took care to draw parallels between himself and his great precursor. But, as a Muslim, Tamerlane drew on Islamic traditions, and his waging of wars in the name of jihad, whether sincere or not, had a more powerful impact than those of any Muslim Mongol ruler before him.

Peter Jackson (Author), John Lee (Narrator)

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The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections

This landmark volume, edited and introduced by Anand Teltumbde and Suraj Yengde, establishes B.R. Ambedkar as the most powerful advocate of equality and fraternity in modern India. While the vibrant Dalit movement recognizes Ambedkar as an agent for social change, the intellectual class has celebrated him as the key architect of the Indian Constitution and the political establishment has sought to limit his concerns to the question of reservations. This remarkable volume seeks to unpack the radical in Ambedkar's legacy by examining his life work from hitherto unexplored perspectives.Although revered by millions today primarily as a Dalit icon, Ambedkar was a serious scholar of India's history, society and foreign policy. He was also among the first dedicated human rights lawyers, as well as a journalist and a statesman. Critically evaluating his thought and work, the essays in this book-by Jean Drèze, Partha Chatterjee, Sukhadeo Thorat, Manu Bhagavan, Anupama Rao and other internationally renowned names-discuss Ambedkar's theory on minority rights, the consequences of the mass conversion of Dalits to Buddhism, Dalit oppression in the context of racism and anti-Semitism, and the value of his thought for Marxism and feminism, among other global concerns.An extraordinary collection of immense breadth and scholarship that challenges the popular understanding of Ambedkar, The Radical in Ambedkar is essential reading for all those who wish to imagine a new future.

Anand Teltumbde, Suraj Yengde (Author), Rajiv Dadia (Narrator)

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A Woman of Pleasure

'Irrefutable and beautiful' New York Times 'Only Kiyoko Murata can convey this world' YOKO OGAWA, author of The Memory Police, Yomiuri Shibun The year is 1903, and tenacious and spirited Aoi Ichi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan, becoming the protégée of Shinonome, the oiran, or the highest-ranking courtesan. Through Shinonome's teachings, fifteen-year-old Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. Education for a courtesan extends beyond the art of seduction, and as Ichi is taught to read and write she develops a voice that refuses to be dampened by the brothel's rigid hierarchy. Outside the cloistered world of the red-light district, rumours of local worker strikes grow, and as the seasons change in Kumamoto, Ichi, Shinonome and their fellow courtesans begin to wonder how they might redistribute the power and wealth of the brothels among themselves. Critically acclaimed veteran writer Kiyoko Murata creates in stunning detail the harsh yet vibrant lives of women in a red-light district at the turn of the twentieth century. Based on real-life events, A Woman of Pleasure is a testament to the bonds between women and the power of owning one's language and freedom.

Kiyoko Murata (Author), Susan Momoko Hingley (Narrator)

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India's Struggle for Independence

India's Struggle For Independence presents a detailed outlook on the struggle for Indian Independence in a new analytical framework. Designed for ardent history enthusiasts, India's Struggle For Independence is one of the most exhaustive and precise account of the struggle of Indian Independence ever written in the literary world. Written and edited by five expert authors, it presents a detailed outlook on one of the most important periods in Indian history. The facts and details provided in this book have been gathered from oral and written sources, and various other primary sources have been used along with years of intense research. Written with a very concise approach, it is a one of a kind book that details the intricacies of the Indian Independence struggle. The struggle for Indian Independence took a long time and was something that affected the whole country. Every state in the country boasted of some kind of revolt – minor or major during this period. Numerous revolutionaries throughout the country came together in their efforts to fight against the British rule and set their country free. Few of the chapters in the book are The Fight to Secure Press Freedom, Foundation of the Congress: The Myth, World War I and Indian Nationalism: The Ghadar, An Economic Critique of Colonialism, Peasant Movements and Uprisings after 1857, The Non-Cooperation Movement—1920-1922, The Gathering Storm-1927-1929, Civil Rebellions and Tribal Uprisings, and many more. India's Struggle For Independence takes the reader on a journey across India as she was craving for her Independence. This book starts at the very first revolt of 1857 under the guidance of Mangal Pandey, from Rani Lakshmi Bai’s innate passion to free her country, Subhash Chandra Bose’s unmatched charisma and aggressive tactics, to Mahatma Gandhi’s famous civil disobedience and non-cooperation movement, to the final victory in 1947 when the British Raj finally came to an end. The book reflects a coherent narrative as it incorporates the existing historiographical advances and yet provides an utterly new and clear view of this period in Indian history.

Bipan Chandra (Author), Derek Denzil (Narrator)

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FLAVORS OF INDIA: A Culinary Odyssey in Indian Style : World Cuisines: Savoring India's Culinary He

Flavors of India: A Culinary Odyssey in Indian Style: Indian food is renowned for its rich and diverse Flavors, vibrant colors, and aromatic spices that tantalize the taste buds and awaken the senses. From fragrant curries and succulent kebabs to crispy dosas and fluffy naan bread, Indian cuisine offers a culinary adventure like no other. 'Embark on a flavourful journey through the heart of India with 'Flavors of India: A Culinary Odyssey in Indian Style - World Cuisines.' This comprehensive cookbook offers a tantalizing exploration of India's culinary landscape. What sets this book apart? An in-depth exploration of regional Delicacies, Indian Customs, Foods and Lifestyle, Cooking Techniques, and Tips through 15 meticulously crafted chapters to explore the rich tapestry of Indian dishes spanning across regions and seasons. Learn essential cooking techniques, tips, and tricks to master the art of Indian cuisine in your kitchen apart from the glossary of Indian Ingredients and terms

Prabhakar Veeraraghavan (Author), Antony (Narrator)

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[Dutch; Flemish] - De schaduw van Tambora: De grootste natuurramp sinds mensenheugenis

Het meeslepende verhaal van een van de grootste vulkaanuitbarstingen aller tijden 'Dröge belicht zijn onderwerp van alle kanten en levert een meeslepend boek af.' Trouw In april 1815 vond op het eiland Soembawa, in het toenmalige Nederlands-Indië, de grootste vulkaanuitbarsting sinds mensenheugenis plaats. Deze uitbarsting verbijsterde behalve de plaatselijke bevolking ook de koloniale overheersers. De enorme aswolk die na de eruptie over de wereld dreef, zorgde voor hagel op Sri Lanka en sneeuw in het zuiden van de VS. Twee natuurverschijnselen die daarvoor én daarna nooit meer zijn waargenomen. Het boek volgt de wolk die na de uitbarsting over de hele wereld heen trekt. Dröge beschrijft hoe men wereldwijd tegen het unieke fenomeen aankeek en hoe men het niet altijd als een natuurverschijnsel zag, maar vaak ook als een goddelijk teken. De schaduw van Tambora vertelt het ongelooflijke verhaal van de mega-uitbarsting en de opkomst van de moderne wetenschap. Het is een reisboek en het geeft een prachtig tijdsbeeld, maar het is bovenal een geweldig verhaal. De pers over De schaduw van Tambora: 'Verborgen geschiedenis – opgedist met een fijn huivergehalte.' Frank Westerman 'In zijn prettig geschreven De schaduw van Tambora beschrijft Dröge de verbijsterende gevolgen van deze uitbarsting wereldwijd. […] Een bijzonder leerzaam boek.' NRC Handelsblad 'Geologische thriller en pageturner, geschreven met vakmanschap en bijzonder fraai uitgegeven. Vijf sterren.' De Standaard 'Geen boek om je bij te vervelen.' Het Parool Philip Dröge is schrijver, columnist en onderzoeksjournalist. Naast zijn boeken schreef hij de korte verhalen Barbarenzaken en De Republiek Groningen. Zijn boeken zijn vertaald in het Duits en Italiaans, en werden genomineerd voor de Jan Wolkers Prijs en de Libris Geschiedenis Prijs.

Philip Dröge (Author), Philip Dröge (Narrator)

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Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes

A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen. With over 20 Khmer recipes included, Slow Noodles will resonate with readers who loved the food and emotional truth of Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart, and it has the staying power of Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father. "I've never read a book that made me weep, wince, laugh out loud, and rejoice like Slow Noodles. In Chantha Nguon's harrowing, wise, and fiercely feminist memoir, cooking is a language-of love, remembrance, and rebellion-and stories are nourishment." -Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and one wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains. In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodia refugee who lost everything and everyone-her house, her country, her parents, her siblings, her friends-everything but the memories of her mother's kitchen, the tastes and aromas of the foods her mother made before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart in the 1970s, killing millions of her compatriots. Nguon's irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this emotional and poignant but also lyrical and magical memoir that includes over 20 recipes for Khmer dishes like chicken lime soup, banh sung noodles, pâté de foie, curries, spring rolls, and stir-fries. For Nguon, recreating these dishes becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother. From her idyllic early years in Battambang to hiding as a young girl in Phnom Penh as the country purges ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family, from her escape to Saigon to the deaths of mother and sister there, from the poverty and devastation she experiences in a war-ravaged Vietnam to her decision to flee the country. We follow Chantha on a harrowing river crossing into Thailand-part of the exodus that gave rise to the name "boat people"-and her decades in a refugee camp there, until finally, denied passage to the West, she returns to a forever changed Cambodia. Nguon survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture-nurse treating refugees abused by Thai authorities, and weaving silk. Through it all, Nguon relies on her mother's "slow noodles" approach to healing and to cooking, one that prioritizes time and care over expediency. Haunting and evocative, Slow Noodles is a testament to the power of culinary heritage to spark the rebirth of a young woman's hopes for a beautiful life.

Chantha Nguon (Author), Clara Kim, TBD (Narrator)

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Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir Of Surviving India's Caste System

For readers of Caste, the coming-of-age story of a Dalit individual that illuminates systemic injustice in India and its growing impact on US society Born into a 'formerly untouchable manual-scavenging family in small-town India,' Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear "Dalit looking." Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste's influence in India over everything from entertainment to judicial systems and how this discrimination has carried over to US institutions. Dutt traces how colonial British forces exploited and perpetuated a centuries old caste system, how Gandhi could have been more forceful in combatting prejudice, and the role played by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, whom Isabel Wilkerson called "the MLK of India's caste issues" in her book Caste. Alongside her analysis, Dutt interweaves personal stories of learning to speak without a regional accent growing up and desperately using medicinal packs to try to lighten her skin. Published in India in 2019 to acclaim, this expanded edition includes two new chapters covering how the caste system traveled to the US, its history here, and the continuation of bias by South Asian communities in professional sectors. Amid growing conversations about caste discrimination prompting US institutions including Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California system, and the NAACP to add caste as a protected category to their policies, Dutt's work sheds essential light on the significant influence caste-ism has across many aspects of US society. Raw and affecting, Coming Out as Dalit brings a new audience of readers into a crucial conversation about embracing Dalit identity, offering a way to change the way people think about caste in their own communities and beyond.

Yashica Dutt (Author), Janina Edwards (Narrator)

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The Political Thought of Xi Jinping

Over the course of the last half dozen years, China's supreme leader Xi Jinping has made extraordinary changes which have profound implications not only for the Chinese people but nations throughout the world. Given how swiftly and fundamentally China's relations with the rest of the world are changing under Xi's rule, it is imperative that we know what Xi Jinping Thought is, how it evolved, and why it is so important. In The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung provide an authoritative overview of what 'Xi Jinping Thought' is and is not and what it means for both China and the world. Xi, now effectively leader for life, has worked to ensure that 'Xi Jinping Thought' becomes cemented as the new state ideology. Clearly inspired by the doctrine of 'Mao Zedong Thought,' which shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for a quarter century, Xi wants his doctrine to define what he calls the 'China Dream of national rejuvenation' and serve the pathway to its fulfillment by 2050. Drawing from original research of Xi's speeches, writings, and policies, Tsang and Cheung conceptualize Xi's vision independently from interpretations provided by the Chinese Communist Party or other sources. They further examine and explain how Xi seeks to transform this vision into reality.

Olivia Cheung, Steve Tsang (Author), Rebecca Lam (Narrator)

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Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a 'coolie'-the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. In Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter Gaiutra Bahadur embarks on a journey into the past to find her. Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother's story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives. Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were either runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many of them left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages-traumatic 'middle passages'-only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and sexual exploitation. Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora-from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next-that is at once a search for one's roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.

Gaiutra Bahadur (Author), Gaiutra Bahadur (Narrator)

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Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

Brought to you by Penguin. A story of staggering scope and drama, Revolusi is the masterful and definitive account of the epic revolution that sparked the decolonisation of the modern world. On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and on behalf of 68 million compatriots announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first colonised country to declare its independence after the Second World War. Four million civilians had died during the wartime occupation by the Japanese that ousted the Dutch colonial regime. Another 200,000 people would lose their lives in the astonishingly brutal conflict that ensued - as the Dutch used savage violence to reassert their control, and as the Allied troops of Britain and America became embroiled in pacifying Indonesia's guerrilla war of resistance: the 'Revolusi'. It was not until December 1949 that the newly created United Nations convinced the Netherlands to cede all sovereignty to Indonesia, finally ending 350 years of colonial rule and setting a precedent that would reshape the world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck turns this vast and complex story into an utterly gripping narrative that is alive with human detail at every turn. A landmark publication, Revolusi shows Indonesia's struggle for independence to be one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century and establishes its author as one of the most gifted narrative historians at work in any language today. ©2024 David Van Reybrouck (P)2024 Penguin Audio

David Van Reybrouck (Author), Neil Gardner, TBD (Narrator)

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1971: A People’s History of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan

The year 1971 exists everywhere in Bangladesh-on its roads, in sculptures, in its museums and oral history projects, in its curriculum, in people's homes and their stories, and in political discourse. It marks the birth of the nation, it's liberation. More than 1000 miles away, in Pakistan too, 1971 marks a watershed moment, its memories sitting uncomfortably in public imagination. It is remembered as the 'Fall of Dacca', the dismemberment of Pakistan or the third Indo-Pak war. In India, 1971 represents something else-the story of humanitarian intervention, of triumph and valour that paved the way for India's rise as a military power, the beginning of its journey to becoming a regional superpower. Navigating the widely varied terrain that is 1971 across Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, Anam Zakaria sifts through three distinct state narratives, and studies the institutionalization of the memory of the year and its events. Through a personal journey, she juxtaposes state narratives with people's history on the ground, bringing forth the nuanced experiences of those who lived through the war. Using intergenerational interviews, textbook analyses, visits to schools and travels to museums and sites commemorating 1971, Zakaria explores the ways in which 1971 is remembered and forgotten across countries, generations and communities.

Anam Zakaria (Author), Meher Acharia Dar (Narrator)

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Asia Audiobooks in History