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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-05-25 09:35 am
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Night Watch (Discworld, volume 29/City Watch, volume 6) by Terry Pratchett



A time-displaced cop struggles to protect history and the glorious revolution from a time-displaced psychopath, as well as from the cop's own better nature.

Night Watch (Discworld, volume 29/City Watch, volume 6) by Terry Pratchett

(Anonymous) 2025-05-26 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting Times' Orientalism: it's a book in conversation with the history of Anglophone depictions of China and Japan so I'd contend its Orientalism is more baked into the superstructure than originating in the book... but it's still in there, so it's completely fair criticism.

[personal profile] ba_munronoe 2025-05-27 07:26 am (UTC)(link)
I eventually got rather pissed over the fact that the Agatean Empire went from being clearly a far more civilized country than Ahnk-Morepork (not to mention vastly more powerful) to being a place backwards enough that "reforming" nobles ape all things Moreporkian and apparently there's a *Communist revolution coming?
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[personal profile] scott_sanford 2025-05-28 12:39 pm (UTC)(link)
To be sure, all of those things were true of China at various times.

But I think it's a mistake to try to read Interesting Times as riffing off of the real China when it's so obviously riffing off of low-information English Orientalist fantasies about China.