Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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The cup, the plough and the sword

k8882One of the straightforward, instant side-effects of reading Christopher C. Beckwith’s excellent Empires of the Silk Road is, one sort of starts thinking we are all at least a little Indo-Europeans/Euro-Asians in the end.
While the approach might initially seem rambling to the uneducated (such as myself), in the long run the Princeton University Press book builds data upon data, creating a very organic, concise but complete picture of the comings and goings of our Indo-European ancestors in the last… make it ten thousand years.

Now, while I like the later part very much as it provides tons of information which I might use to tighten up the revision of my non-fiction ebook about the Silk Road, I must admit the first chapter, with its catalogue of creation myths, really got me hooked.
There is this very consistent myth, found almost everywhere from China to the Mediterranean and Western Europe, which goes more or less like this… Continue reading


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China, Japan, Korea – a (very) quick introduction

effectsI promised a short review of Corey Walden’s The Effect Of China On Korea And Japan In Pre-Modern Asia, a short (14 pages) Kindle text that was free until a few days ago, and now goes for about one buck.
The ebook is essentially a long article describing, well, the effect(s) of China on Korea and Japan in Pre-Modern Asia.
As an introductory text on the topic, this is fine – but I find it ultimately very lightweight.
It would be nice as a magazine piece, or as the introductory chapter of a far longer and detailed text.
It’s a good starting point, it can be read in one hour.
Is it worth a buck?
YMMV.
Sure some pointers to further readings would have been greatly appreciated


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Mediterranean pulp?

mediterranean_food[I’ll explain the groceries in a minute…]
Now, there’s an Italian, a Spaniard and an American…
No, it’s not a silly joke.
It’s what happened in a quick exchange of tweets, a few nights back, with two fine gentlemen from America and Spain respectively.
The subject was pulp.
New Pulp, if you will.
The question was – what about stories not set in the United States?

What about some international setting?

I contributed tha suggestion that, preserving the time-frame (stories set somewhere between the ’30s and ’40s), and the overall structure (character-driven thrills and derring-do), the Mediterranean area would be the perfect setting.

Just consider…

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