How did Asia fare in the “Best Books” lists of 2021? Not perhaps as well as in 2020, if this (highly unscientific) sampling is anything to go by, despite taking a broad view of what constitutes an “Asian” book.
Category Archive: News
This year’s subjective list of books we thought worthy of particular mention over the past 12 months: fiction (in translation and not), short stories, graphic novels, history, memoir, travel, photography, literature, culture, politics, society and children’s books covering Asia from the Pacific to the Black Sea, from the Russian Far East to India and Caucasus.
A compilation of reviews and other coverage in the past twelve months for Women in Translation month (August 2021): by author, translator and language, including non-fiction and poetry and well as novels and short stories.
Hong Kong soprano Louise Kwong sang selections from Puccini, Cilèa and Verdi in a special concert in a special “Concerto Italiano”, presented by the Italian Consulate-General in Hong Kong at the City Hall and streamed online on the occasion of the Italian National Day.
To commemorate the 700th anniversary of the death of the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri, Chameleon Press will publish a new collection of poetry in which contemporary poets from Asia interpret themes Dante’s opus with a particular focus on Beatrice, the object of Dante’s youthful love, his muse and guide. Due to a change in the associated musical composition competition, as well as Covid-19-related scheduling issues regarding associated public events, the submission deadline for the Dante poetry anthology has been extended until May 2021.
A round-up of reviews of works in translation from Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Pali, Bengali, Tamil, Farsi, Armenian and Arabic: classics, contemporary fiction, short stories and poetry.
Not only does a good chunk of Russia, most of it in fact, lie in Asia, but Russian-language writers (not all of them Russian) have works set in whole or in part in Asia. 2020 saw new translations of modern classics by Sergei Tretyakov and Alexander Grin, as well as translations of new novels set in the Arctic, Caucasus and Central Asia.