Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

This is a fabulous collection. The book's wide-ranging scope and its impressive essays by a group of international contributors make it one of the definitive volumes on the COVID-19 pandemic. But though the volume focuses on Asian religions and culture--it takes its title from a creature of the same name depicting the virus itself and created in the form of a traditional Hindu demon--the essays also explicate the virus and responses universally. The beginning essays consider deities, rituals, myths, remedies, and the reinvention and renewal of traditional beliefs. These are followed by essays on educational preventions and media responses, with special emphasis on distancing and how to preform cultural and religious actions and rituals in a new way. The other essays consider how to reconfigure sacred spaces and how the populations were affected. This book evolved from the CoronAsur blog created by the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. "Bacteria, viruses, ghosts, holy spirits. A number of invisible entities spill from nonhuman to human, betraying the precariousness and porousness of the boundaries separating them." Thus begins this delightful and educational volume.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.