Spectres & Souls
In the Preface to Spectres & Souls, we quoted ‘Romain Rolland: The Man and His Work’, a commemorative essay written by Stefan Zweig to celebrate his old friend.… Read
Spectres & Souls
The 23rd of December 2022 will mark thirty years since ‘Santaland Diaries’ featured on Morning Edition on National Public Radio. In 1992, I split my time between Canberra, where I had a postdoctoral fellowship at the Australian National University, the People’s Republic of China, where friends flourished once more in the midst of a phantasmagoria, and Boston, where I was working on a film about the 1989 Beijing Uprising.… Read
Spectres & Souls
I announced the launch of China Heritage at the end of a keynote address — ‘Living with Xi Dada’s China — Making Choices and Cutting Deals’ — presented on 16 December 2016 at a conference on Chinese intellectual history held in Melbourne Australia.… Read
Spectres & Souls
In the northern summer of 2018, a spark from a rancher’s steel hammer pounding on a rusty stake in a bone-dry field ignited the largest wildland fire in the history of California. … Read
Spectres & Souls
Shortly after the demise of Mao Zedong in September 1976, Simon Leys observed that:
‘…in a normal everyday situation where “his giant’s wings prevent him from walking”, any Great Leader worth his salt has a strong tendency to stir up artificial gales in order to get some wind back under his pinions.… Read
The Best China
Pierre Ryckmans, better known to readers under the pen name of Simon Leys, valued Jacques Pimpaneau as ‘a colourful character, original, a non-conformity, an oddball, cultivated, generous.’ (As quoted in Philippe Paquet, Simon Leys: Navigator Between Worlds, p.230.)… Read