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This is a beautiful translation by John Farndon (with Olga Nakston) of the late Ravil Bukharaev’s literary existential novel memoir in which he explains to his wife how his Muslim faith and ideals influenced both his love for her and his understanding of life and self, particularly his quest for truth and ‘authenticity’. Throughout their long marriage, the writers and poets Ravil Bukharaev and Lydia Grigorieva had written in separate rooms in their home. In this deeply-felt and poetic memoir, Ravil writes to Lydia in order to try explain (at last) things left unsaid over the years. With immense honesty and insight, he explores how their journey together has been shaped by his profound Muslim beliefs and his lifelong search for what is authentic and true. Along the way, he creates finely defined and moving vignettes of eight very different people struggling to find meaning in their lives, from old Elizaveta Osipovna, alone in her Moscow flat, to proud Arzhana coping with a tough life in the Altai mountains.

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My Korea: Forty Years Without a Horsehair Hat is a cultural introduction to Korea, part memoir and part miscellany, which introduces traditional and contemporary culture through a series of essays, stories, anecdotes and poems. The book seeks to tell the reader all that he or she needs to know for a full and rewarding life in Korea or as a visitor passing through. Confucianism, Buddhism, relationships, everyday living, language and literature are comprehensively covered. Newcomers to Korea are provided with insights into daily life. They are told how to deal with people and the intricacies of honorific language, how to handle business dealings, how to be comfortable with social ranking, and how to react when they bump into the cultural wall.

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This is a translation of the only known detailed account of the building of the notorious 262-mile long Thai-Burma Railway by one of the Japanese professional engineers who was involved in its construction. The author, Yoshihiko Futamatsu, provides an invaluable new source of historical and technical reference that complements the existing large body of literature in English on this subject. Futamatsu’s memoir also includes wide-ranging reflections on the course and conduct of ‘his’ war as well as his engineering and army experiences. The Thai-Burma Railway took eighteen months to build and cost the lives of some 90,000 people (mostly British, Australian, Dutch and American POWs, as well as great numbers of local labourers) out of a total of over 200,000, including some 12-15,000 Japanese who were engaged in the enterprise. The ‘Three Pagodas Pass’ was located at the Thai-Burma frontier. Across the Three Pagodas Pass is edited and introduced by Peter N. Davies who provides the back story to the publication of this book and the key people involved. This is followed by translator Ewart Escritt’s original Introduction to his translation of Futamatsu’s memoir which also includes a detailed account of his own POW experiences as well as his reflections on the war and its outcomes. Many contemporary original drawings, maps and photographs appear in the plate section.

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Including her survival of Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake, this book is an enthralling account of Dorothy Britton’s life, loves and discoveries in an amazingly varied life and career. Bilingual from birth, she found the immense joy of blending in with peoples of different cultures simply by getting the sound right when speaking their languages to the extent that she herself sounds Japanese. While interviewing Talent Education’s Shinichi Suzuki, she realized his peerless ‘mother tongue method’ for learning the violin was ideal for foreign languages too. While composing music for many documentary films introducing Japan to the world, in Empire Photosound’s beautiful My Garden Japan she used the ancient instruments of the Imperial Court Orchestra. The film was shown daily at Montreal’s EXPO 67 where it garnered a prize. Amusing episodes and stories of fascinating people and relationships abound in the book, as do valuable insights into topics such as the post-war Occupation and its impact on everyday life, the role of women, learning Japanese, marriage customs, food and many other aspects of Japanese culture and society. Appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2010 for her highly regarded contributions to bridging two cultures, this long-awaited memoir will be widely welcomed. Here is the remarkable and remarkably frank story of a life lived to the full by the doyenne of British residents in Japan that has benefited so many and touched the lives of countless others.

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The late Michael Foot, once leader of the Labour party, lives on as a major figure in British political history, although he is best remembered as a fiery and eloquent standard-bearer for socialist beliefs and policies. But what of the man behind the politics? In this new biography, Carl Rollyson chronicles the intricacies and intimacies of the life Michael Foot led away from the public eye. Fashioned from transcripts of more than two hundred conversations between author and subject that took place during three years Rollyson spent researching the life of Foot’s wife, Jill Craigie, this book presents a portrait that contrasts starkly with Foot’s public image. In the manner of Boswell, Rollyson presents us with a man who—for all his public oratory—in private often found himself lost for words. 'A Private Life of Michael Foot' adopts a no holds barred approach to biography, leaving a political figure stripped bare, and revealing a deeply complex, introverted man for all to see.

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J.M. Synge was a tireless traveller who, while celebrating the beauties of the Irish landscape, never flinched from describing the harsh, unromantic reality of rural life.
<br><br>Capturing the embers of a dying culture, the great playwright walks, drinks and talks with a rich assortment of country people, offering unforgettable descriptions of the Puck Fair at Killorglin and horse-racing on the strand near Dingle, of remote cottages and isolated fishing villages.
Seamus Heaney wrote of Synge in 'Glanmore Eclogue' that he<br><br>Was never happier than when he was on the road<br>With people on their uppers. Loneliness<br>Was his passport through the world. Midge-angels<br>On the face of water, the first drop before thunder…<br>His spirit lives for me in things like that.<br><br>Synge's wandering spirit, as well as the farmers and tinkers, weavers and boat-builders he befriended, live on in these pages, which cannot fail to delight anyone who loves Ireland and her literature.

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'Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves, express a life that has never found expression.' J.M. Synge did exactly as W.B. Yeats suggested and, revisiting these harsh yet beautiful specks of land off Ireland's west coast over a period of five years, created a literary masterpiece. Synge immersed himself in the islanders' lives as they steered their curaghs through Atlantic waves, mourned their dead, celebrated weddings and suffered the horrors of eviction.&nbsp; The Aran Islands &nbsp;weaves their stories with Synge's own and the result, as Colm Tóibí­n has observed, is that 'Unlike most travel books of 100 years ago, it has not dated at all.'

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