The Lands of Charm and Cruelty

‘With detail, expertise and a moral voice, freelance writer Sesser portrays five repressed lands. His narratives – reprinted from the New Yorker – begin with the contradictions of Singapore, prosperous and tidy, whose competent, incorruptible leaders rule by fear. In desperately poor Laos, where the United States dropped more bombs than on Nazi Germany, villagers fashion daily essentials from remnant...