In this article, the reviewers, Lee-Tat Chow and Peidong Yang compare and contrast "Desiring TESOL and international education," by Raqib Chowdhury and Phan Le-Ha, London, Multilingual Matters, 2014, 288 pp., £29.95 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-783-09147-8 with "Transnational education crossing 'Asia' and 'the West'," by Phan LeHa, New York, Routledge, 2017, 260 pp., £36.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-138- 60460-5. Chow and Yang assert "Desiring TESOL and International Education" and "Transnational Education Crossing 'Asia' and 'the West'" are two important works that mark significant advances in scholarly understandings of desire within the context of international education (henceforth also including its correlate, transnational education). Grounded in rich empirical research, both accounts show how particular constructions of desire and desiring subjects, framed within an 'East' (or 'Asia')-'West' dichotomy, are indispensable for sustaining contemporary trends and developments in international education. Specifically, both works explore how understandings of international education, and the image(s) of the international student, are constructed and perpetuated through discourses; as well as the experiences of international students as they adopt, resist or appropriate these discourses. "Desiring TESOL" primarily explores these issues in the Australian context of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) education, whereas "Transnational Education" addresses a similar set of questions through the case of transnational education (TNE) programmes emerging recently in Asia. Chow and Yang look at each work in turn.