In this Issue

News & Events
ALR

 

For an idea of what's in this issue, click here to read our free-to-view articles and From the EditorsThen scroll down to the contents list below, where we feature an extract from Sebastian Sim's Let's Give It Up for Gimme Lao! There's a sample of ALR31's poetry in John Thieme's mischievous Chinese Checkers. We also offer two terrific interviews, where Xu Xi searches for Gordon Ashberry, her missing protagonist, while Krys Lee tells us about her new novel, set in the borderlands of North Korea and China.

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Fiction
Sebastian Sim

 

There were three things Gimme Lao did not know about himself.

The first occurred at his point of birth. The second happened way before he was born. And the third repeated itself many times over his life. Strictly speaking, the third was not about him. It was about the pivotal impact he had on other people, which he never found out about.

Take, for example, Yik Fan. Gimme Lao and Yik Fan went to the same primary school. Being two years apart, they were not in the same class, nor did they end up in the same extracurricular sports team. As far as he was concerned, Gimme Lao never knew Yik Fan existed.

Yik Fan, on the other hand, would never forget Gimme Lao. More...

 

Interviews
ALR

 

When Nixon met Mao, it was a bit like when Harry met Sally – the beginning of a long relationship that would prove to be fraught with tension and arguments, but also involved cooperation, mutually beneficial trades and cultural, artistic and personal interaction. It was also the beginning of a challenge to US supremacy as the world’s superpower, because China’s subsequent economic rise proved so startling and fast, much faster than the world expected.

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News & Events

Interviews

Non-fiction

Poetry

John Thieme
Abhay K

Fiction