Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan is a magical-realist centered on Indonesia in the years after Suharto’s fall in 1998. It opens with the main character emerging from her grave to check up on what’s happened to her daughters and grandchildren, and it’s not pretty. The family is dealing with a lot of drama,… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Emerging Markets
Bolivia: A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism
I first learned about Bolivia in second grade. One of the priests at my parish had served as a Maryknoll missionary in Bolivia, and he visited our classroom to tell us about it. Bolivia had two capitals, La Paz and Sucre, and the women wore bowler hats. To second graders, these were things that made… [Read More]
Egypt: Palace of Desire
To cover Egypt in my Around the World project, I picked up the second book in the Naguib Mahfouz Cairo Trilogy. I read the first one, Palace Walk, seemingly a million years ago. It may take me another million years to get to the third, but I hope not because the first two were really… [Read More]
Bahrain: The Battle for the Arab Spring
Bahrain is an island nation in the Middle East, situated between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is connected to Saudi Arabia by a bridge; it is divided by religious denomination and social class. It has fewer remaining oil reserves than most of its neighbors, but it has a more diverse economy than many. Other industries… [Read More]
Argentina: An Economic Chronicle
I’ve long been fascinated with Argentina, which was once one of the richest countries in the world. Argentina: An Economic Chronicle. How One of the Richest Countries in the World Lost Its Wealth is the memoir of Vito Tanzi, who was a staff member at the International Monetary Fund who worked on Argentine issues in… [Read More]
