THE MAN IN THE WOODEN HAT By Jane Gardam Europa Editions ... Servants were his family and his only friend was a bizarre Chinese dwarf named Albert Ross, sometimes facetiously called “Albertross ...

Edward and Elizabeth meet in Hong Kong, and Gardam beautifully evokes the post-war period when the English try to live as if in the heyday of Empire, to the amused indifference of the Chinese.

Nicolas Niarchos shares reporting from a civil war in which Sudan’s Black minority is caught between warring factions led by members of the country’s Arab majority.

The Man in the Wooden Hat (the title reference I'll allow you to discover for yourselves, as well as the chorus-like figure of Filth's card-throwing Chinese dwarf friend, Albert Ross). For its wit ...