Showing results by narrator "Keith Brockett" in All Categories

It sounded like a good idea at the time—a Hollywood spy thriller, starring, for the first time in history, an Asian male lead. With an estimated $350 million production budget and up-and-coming Hong Kong actor JK Jr, who, let's be honest, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but probably the hottest, Brood Empire was basically a sure thing. Until it wasn't.

Subhi's imagination is as big as the ocean and wide as the sky, but his world is much smaller: he's spent his whole life in an immigration detention centre. The Bone Sparrow is a powerful, heartbreaking, sometimes funny and ultimately uplifting hymn to freedom and love. Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. I lie in my bed, Queeny's feet pushing up against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent.

Ghost Cities - inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China - follows multiple narratives, including one in which a young man named Xiang is fired from his job as a translator at Sydney's Chinese Consulate after it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate for his work. How is his relocation to one such ghost city connected to a parallel odyssey in which an ancient Emperor creates a thousand doubles of Himself?

At the age of nine, Jin Xing entered a military academy. He knew that he had been born to dance and, in Mao's China, it was the army that provided the best training. His exceptional talent was soon recognised; by the time he was eighteen, he was regarded as the best principal dancer in China. He won a scholarship to study in the United States where he discovered a new world of contemporary dance, and made both a new identity and a decision that was to change his life - and would shake the whole of China: Jin Xing underwent a sex-change.

Spanning the centuries and crossing the globe, this engaging introduction covers everything Daoist, from the religion of the ancients to 21st century T’ai Chi and meditation. Complete with a timeline of Daoist history and a full glossary, Daoism will prove invaluable not only to students, but also to general listeners who wish to learn more about the origins and nature of a profound tradition, and about its role and relevance in our fast-moving 21st-century existence.

As dramatic, graceful and deeply felt as a pas de deux, Shanghai Tango is a deeply personal and inspiring account of growing up in a body that feels alien and of braving pioneering surgery in communist China.

Seventeen-year-old Aisha hasn't seen her sister June for two years. And now that a calamity is about to end the world in nine months' time, she and her mother decide that it's time to track her down and mend the hurts of the past. Along with Aisha's boyfriend, Walter and his parents (and Fleabag the stray cat), the group take a roadtrip through Malaysia in a wildly decorated campervan – to put the past to rest, to come to terms with the present, and to hope for the future.

Mingzhi is born to be a mandarin: As the formidable Master Chai's first grandson, his life is mapped from the moment of his birth. But times are changing in China, and as Mingzhi grows, he begins to question his privileged heritage and the secrets and shadows that lurk in the corners of the Chai mansion. Eager to flee from the corruption, treachery and rivalries of his family, Mingzhi soon realises his only path to freedom is through learning.