Thanks to Italian publisher Neri Pozza, Sparks is coming out in Italian and thanks to two Italy-based academics I’ll be on a four-day seven-lecture tour of the country from Rome to Naples to Milan to Pavia to Florence. 

I’ve put all the details of the tour on the usual speaking/media page but I thought I’d mention how I like the way the book is being presented. First, the subtitle is pretty grabby–“Clandestine Stories from China.” These are indeed clandestine stories, not only in the sense of them being secret but also because the term has a whiff of the conspiratorial, the dangerous, and the underground.

The talks themselves are also cleverly framed for a general audience. Many of them play on the concept of China being a “vulnerable superpower,” which I think is useful, especially because we’re bombarded with hype about China being on the march forward. It is, but it’s also fragile, in part because of the underground historians’ “clandestine stories,” which undermine CCP rule. 

It’s also nice to be speaking at such a variety of  venues: universities, think tanks, and even in a Florentine villa. I’m especially grateful to Enrico Fardella at the University of Naples for organizing the Rome/Naples leg and Axel Berkofsky of the University of Pavia and ISPI in Milan.