While it’s not specifically Southeast Asian focused, a few figures from the region feature: chiefly Walter Spies (1895-1942), the German painter who settled in Bali after a period in Java, and also Raden Saleh (1811-80), a Javanese painter who found fame by going, unusually, in the other direction (East to West; hot to cold) to Europe.
In addition is a great introduction about how James’ came to relocate to Indonesia in 1999, which includes a fabulous visit to a near-deserted Angkor Wat temple complex largely still under Khmer Rouge control back in 1989. (The others in the book are painter Paul Gauguin (Tahiti); Russian-Swiss writer Isabelle Eberhardt (the Sahara); filmmaker Maya Deren (Haiti); and Victor Segalen (China).)
James calls his subjects “exotes”. While a traveller or an expatriate eventually goes home, his subjects do not; we aren’t sure why he doesn’t call them simply immigrants, though he does note that they tended to roam at least initially in search of a new home. It was notably only a privileged few — socially, economically, usually both — who were able to do this back when passports were yet to be invented. Today, when millions are displaced and seeking a home of their own — not for artistic reasons but simply to survive — the book is a reminder of how things have changed (of course it still remains easier for the wealthier to migrate).
While this is not an academically rigorous study — James left out many other artists simply to control the size of the project — it’s a meticulously researched work that also manages to ask questions about the artist and their relation to the world.
Buy online: Amazon | Book Depository | Barnes & Noble |
108 results found
Burmese Days
By George Orwell
Finding George Orwell
By Emma Larkin
Miss Burma
By Charmaine Craig
The Glass Palace
By Amitav Ghosh
The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma
By Thant Myint-U
The Trouser People
By Andrew Marshall
Destination Cambodia: Adventures in the Kingdom
By Walter Mason
Dogs at the Perimeter
By Madeleine Thien
Holiday in Cambodia
By Laura Jean McKay
Hun Sen’s Cambodia
By Sebastian Strangio
Hunters in the Dark
By Lawrence Osborne
King Norodom's Head
By Steven W. Boswell
River of Time
By Jon Swain
The Gate
By Francoise Bizot
A House in Bali
By Colin McPhee
Beauty is a Wound
By Eka Kurniawan
Black Water
By Louise Doughty
Home
By Leila S. Chudori
In the Time of Madness
By Richard Lloyd Parry
Indonesia Etc.
By Elizabeth Pisani
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
By Simon Winchester
Map of the Invisible World
By Tash Aw
On the Java Ridge
By Jock Serong
Raffles and the British Invasion of Java
By Tim Hannigan
Ring of Fire
By Lawrence Blair
The Banda Islands: Hidden Histories and Miracles of Nature
By Jan Russell (editor)
The Malay Archipelago
By Alfred Russel Wallace
The Rainbow Troops
By Andrea Hirata
The Year of Living Dangerously
By Christopher J. Koch
This Earth of Mankind
By Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Under the Volcano
By Cameron Forbes
A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA
By Joshua Kurlantzick
Afterland: Poems
By Mai Der Vang
Hot Sour Salty Sweet
By Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
I Shot the Buddha (A Dr Siri Paiboun Mystery)
By Colin Cotterill
Stalking The Elephant Kings
By Christopher Kremmer
The Coroner's Lunch: A Dr Siri Murder Mystery
By Colin Cotterill
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
By Anne Fadiman
My Life As a Fake
By Peter Carey
The Face: Strangers on a Pier
By Tash Aw
The Garden of Evening Mists
By Tan Twan Eng
The Harmony Silk Factory
By Tash Aw
When the Future Comes Too Soon
By Selina Siak Chin Yoke
Crazy Rich Asians
By Kevin Kwan
From Third World to First
By Lee Kuan Yew
If I Could Tell You
By Jing-Jing Lee
In Transit: An Anthology
By Zhang Ruihe and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
It Never Rains on National Day
By Jeremy Tiang
Sarong Party Girls
By Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Singapore Noir
By Cheryl Lu-Tien Tan
State of Emergency
By Jeremy Tiang
Sugarbread
By Balli Kaur Jaswal
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
By Sonny Liew
The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza
By Cyril Wong
The Tower
By Isa Kamari (translated by Alfian Sa'at)
A Tiger in Eden
By Chris Flynn
Bangkok Found
By Alex Kerr
Bangkok: A Cultural and Literary History
By Maryvelma O’Neil
Hothouse Flower
By Lucinda Riley
Jasmine Nights
By S.P. Somtow
Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind
By Carol Hollinger
Many Lives
By M.R Kukrit Pramoj
Sightseeing
By Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Thai Street Food
By David Thompson
The 1904 Traveller's Guide to Bangkok and Siam
By J. Antonio
The Beach
By Alex Garland
The Drinking Food of Thailand
By Andy Ricker with JJ Goode
The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War
By Joshua Kurlantzick
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
By Richard Flanagan
The Sad Part Was
By Prabda Yoon
The Windup Girl
By Paolo Bacigalupi
Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture
By Philip Cornwel-Smith
Bright Shining Lie
By Neil Sheehan
Destination Saigon
By Walter Mason
Dragon Apparent
By Norman Lewis
Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table
By Graham Holliday
Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars
By Andrew X. Pham
Fishing for Tigers
By Emily Maguire
Night Sky With Exit Wounds
By Ocean Vuong
The Best We Could Do
By Thi Bui
The Lover
By Marguerite Duras
The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam
By Christopher Goscha
The Quiet American
By Graham Greene
The Refugees
By Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sorrow of War
By Bao Ninh
The Sympathizer
By Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Things They Carried
By Tim O’Brien
Two Cities: Hanoi and Saigon
By Neil Sheehan
When the War Was Over
By Elizabeth Becker
A Cook's Tour
By Anthony Bourdain
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
By Rebecca Solnit
A Fortune Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
By Tiziano Terzani
Asian Godfathers
By Joe Studwell
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
By William Finnegan
Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia
By Michael Vatikiotis
Marco Polo Didn’t Go There
By Rolf Potts
Overbooked: The Exploding Business Of Travel And Tourism
By Elizabeth Becker
Pacific: The Ocean of the Future
By Simon Winchester
The Art of Travel
By Alain de Botton
The Great Railway Bazaar
By Paul Theroux
The Signature of All Things
By Elizabeth Gilbert