Books Coming in 2024
Cam Rivers Publishing, after an active 2023, is readying new books to be released in 2024.
A number of high-profile book releases kept us occupied in 2023. We released the second and third books in our Cambridge Conversations series, Wonder and Art, featuring conversations between Tim Yip, Oscar-winning artistic director and costume designer and Alan Macfarlane. The book received critical acclaim and attention from international audiences. Moreover, over thirty hours of conversations between Dr Richard Marshall and Alan Macfarlane led to the opus titled Understandings of the Modern World: Conversations at a Time of COVID.
We continued our artistic an academic collaborations as well. We launched Ann Massing’s second book, featuring a French translation accompanying the English text and Ann’s ever-brilliant selection of brush paintings, West Meets East in East Asian Brush Paintings. On the academic side, we released Hongyi Yang’s book based on her research, The Cambridge Trio. We recommend these books for any readers interested in furthering their understanding of East Asian art and its influence on the West. We thank our editors, Levente Koroes and Irene Galstian, as well as our design team at MUYE for their work on these pieces, as well as the larger Cam Rivers Team for their continued work.
2023 saw the return of the Xu Zhimo Poetry and Arts Festival in Cambridge in-person. After a few years online, the annual event celebrating the legacy of the Chinese poet took place on the 15th of September in King’s College, and welcomed poets, artists and authors from around the world, where they enjoyed opportunities to exchange poetry, inspiration and ideas.
As we turn our attention to 2024, the horizon is bright for Cam Rivers Publishing.
Biographies
Among the first releases this year is the autobiography of Charlie Loke, Malacca Strait to River Cam. The book traces the journey of a boy born in Malaysia to Cambridge, where he spent the majority of his life. Charlie’s life journey is captivating, adventurous and instructive, and the author’s photos illustrate his stories well.
Later in the year, we are releasing the autobiography of Professor Weiyao Liang, as well as new volumes complementing Alan Macfarlane’s autobiography, What I Have Learnt About Myself and What I have Learnt About the World.
Academic Pieces
In February, The Two Julys, authored by Cambridge University scholars Christopher Prendergast and Peter de Bolla, is going to be released. The book presents the reader context, as well as an almost minute-by-minute retrace of the Fourth and Fourteenth of July - two days, thirteen years apart, which defined the legacy of democracy and the modern West. Prendergast and de Bolla explain the histories and symbols, as well as the legacy, of the American and French revolutions.
The new addition to the Cambridge Conversations series in 2024 will be Discord and Harmony: Unravelling the Chinese Conundrum featuring Sir Vince Cable, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and the University of Nottingham. Following in lockstep of his inquisitive piece, The Chinese Conundrum, a political-economic analysis of China, Sir Vince joins Alan Macfarlane in discussing the social and economic structures of the country, as well as Sir Vince’s background, his time as a politician and as an economist. A new volume in the series will feature interviews between Macfarlane and Nobel laureates, such as Sir Aaron Klug and Frederick Sanger.
For those interested in research and analysis of art history, we are releasing Peter de Bolla’s research on Pierre Bonnard, 19th-century French painter later during the year, as well as the Chinese translation of Paris and the Nineteenth Century authored by Christopher Prendergast. In the field of history and anthropology, Peter Robertson’s A Short History of Africa is an illuminating volume that will be published posthumously in the first half of 2024. Gerry Martin and Alan Macfarlane discuss larger historical themes in What Happened in History, adding to the How We Understand the World series.
Alan’s fascination with China has resulted on a number of books already, such as Understanding the Chinese: A Personal A-Z and China, Japan, Europe and the Anglo-sphere. In 2024, a new addition will be brought out, titled China Past, Present and Future: Conversations With Abbe Evariste Huc.
Poetry and Art
With the continued success of the Xu Zhimo Poetry and Arts Festival, our connection with the arts remains strong. In 2024, we are translating and publishing Rowan Williams’s Collected Poems to Chinese. Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, is a prominent poet, whose religious works have been important to the British literary scene. We hope that the book will reach a wide audience, and that our readers enjoy William’s poems as much as we did.
Books for Children
For our younger audiences, we are releasing a large number of illustration books in 2024.
We thank our editors, Zilan Wang, Levente Koroes and Irene Galstian, as well as our design team at MUYE for their work on these pieces, as well as the larger Cam Rivers Team for their continued work.