Jackson Alone is a singularly unique novel that subverts expectations with a cast of characters who are each vividly imagined, performing confusing and surreal acts in a Twilight Zone ethereality. Written by Jose Ando—a winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize—and translated by Kalau Almony—known for his translations of unique and intense stories—Jackson Alone is a…
Across fifty-odd flash stories (particularly short pieces of fiction) in The Woman Dies, Aoko Matsuda and translator Polly Barton lean into the weird, nitty-gritty world of womanhood. For the most part, there is no immediate throughline connecting the stories—and their rich inner worlds—to each other. Yet eventually, the lines blur enough for images of women,…
Arundhati Roy’s much-awaited memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me, tackles Roy’s writing career, India’s sweeping political instability, and most of all, a reckoning with an exhilarating character: her mother, Mary Roy. From Roy’s village, fictionalised even here as “Ayemenem”, to the chaotic urban sprawl of Delhi, the book covers Roy’s rocky childhood, her brief architectural…
There is no obvious throughline that runs through this new collection of Osamu Dazai stories; only a series of Dostoevskian protagonists—young men who smoke too many cigarettes, cower in social situations, and who are consumed by deep insecurity. Written in the second half of the 1930s, Retrograde has been arranged and translated by Leo Elizabeth…
In Mistress Koharu, a Hungarian love doll comes to life, turning heads as she stalks the streets of Tokyo, while the man who bought her—Akira—strings along two other relationships in a spectacular feat of multitasking greed that benefits no one, least of all him. Written in Japanese by Noboru Tsujihara and translated by Kalau Almony,…
Though the Tamil freedom fighter and writer, CS Chellapa, was initially influenced by the energy and zeal of Bhagat Singh’s anarchical resistance to the British Empire, he grew increasingly enamoured by the non-violent, subtle resistance of Mahatma Gandhi. It’s a seismic shift from Singh to Gandhi, one that many in India adopted pre-independence. Yet it…
In Kyung-Ran Jo’s Blowfish, two people flirt with death in their own traumatic ways, only to find themselves slowly entangled in one another. Translated from the original Korean by Chi-Young Kim, the novel unfolds through alternating perspectives and flits between Seoul and Tokyo. Blowfish privileges atmosphere over plot, unfolding as a moody and cinematic meditation…
In Sanjena Sathian’s new novel, Goddess Complex, women’s bodies are reduced to the idea of their divine if not interchangeable—wombs. The protagonist, Sanjana Satyananda (the stark similarity in names between the author and her character is no coincidence) is a thirty-something burnt-out academic who feels intense alienation toward motherhood. She spends the course of the…
Sex is disgusting and unnecessary, men grow foetuses in a sac of artificial skin, and love between two spouses is strictly platonic and familial. These are the building blocks of the strange and deliriously fascinating alternative reality of Sayaka Murata’s newest novel, Vanishing World. Like all of Murata’s previous stories, questions around the terror of…
The Malayalam edition of the Mini Krishnan-helmed collections of newly translated classic short stories offers readers a glimpse into the changing social landscape of Kerala. Covering stories written and published across forty decades, the writers of The Second Marriage of Kunju Namboodiri and Other Classic Malayalam Stories navigate the various promises of the early 20th…
Banu Mushtaq has been peering into the homes of Muslim women in Southern India her entire life, and she doesn’t like what she sees. Husbands return from work angry, women are beaten, and children fight over food. These scenes populate Mushtaq’s short story collection, Heart Lamp. The stories have been selected from Mushtaq’s vast oeuvre…
A pregnant woman meets a long-lost acquaintance only to have him mysteriously slip through the streets, never to be seen again; a shop owner buys an expensive mannequin yet grows haunted by its look of painted anguish; and a group of teenage boys grow infatuated with a girl-next-door before reality rudely pierces their bubble.
In Saou Ichikawa’s debut story Hunchback, a pendulum swings between desire and survival, told through the voice of a disabled woman in a group home. Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton, the novella has been long-listed for the International Booker Prize, and in Japan, it won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize upon release. Hilarious and provocative,…
Though Kavery Nambisan‘s new family saga Rising Sons skips across towns and cities before ending in the palatial bungalows of Central Delhi, its roots lie in a mostly dry village west of Mysore, where “mud is life.” This is the home of the Ai, the natives of the land before Hindus— bringing with them caste…
In a dystopia-lite future, singles in Korea opt for pseudo-marriages under the mysterious Wedding & Life (W&L for short), an exclusive and expensive matchmaking company that hosts the VIP branch of “New Marriages” (NM). In an NM, W&L clients could pay for a new spouse—either a field wife or field husband (FW or FH)—for a…