Queer Taiwanese Literature: A Reader, Howard Chiang (ed) (Cambria Press, April 2021)
Queer Taiwanese Literature: A Reader, Howard Chiang (ed) (Cambria Press, April 2021)

Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, queer authors have redefined Taiwan’s cultural scene, and throughout the 1990s many of their works have won the most prestigious literary awards and accolades. This anthology provides a deeper understanding of queer literary history in Taiwan. It includes a selection of short stories, previously untranslated, written by Taiwanese authors dating from 1975 to 2020.

Belief, JF Garrard (trans), Allan Cho (trans), Dawn Chow (trans), Silvia Leung (trans) (Dark Helix Press, April 2021)
Belief, JF Garrard (trans), Allan Cho (trans), Dawn Chow (trans), Silvia Leung (trans) (Dark Helix Press, April 2021)

A new anthology from Canada’s renowned Ricepaper Magazine, this third collection in the Ricepaper Magazine series includes short stories, poetry, and nonfiction by writers of Asian descent from across the world. The theme which binds the collection is “belief”, a notion personal to each individual sharing a piece of themselves in their works.

Love and Other Moods, Crystal Z Lee (Balestier, December 2020)
Love and Other Moods, Crystal Z Lee (Balestier, December 2020)

Love and Other Moods is a coming-of-age story set in contemporary China, about falling in love, learning to adult, finding strength, and discovering one’s place in the world. Naomi Kita-Fan uproots her life from New York to China when her fiancé’s company transfers him to Shanghai. After a disastrous turn of events, Naomi finds herself with no job, no boyfriend, and nowhere to live in a foreign country.

The unnamed narrator in Tsumura Kikuko’s There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job quits a job she loves after developing “burnout syndrome”. Her first career (the reader won’t find out what it was until the novel’s final pages) has sucked up “every scrap of energy” she had. She asks a recruiter to find her an easy job—something along the lines of “sitting all day in a chair overseeing the extraction of collagen for use in skin care products”, she suggests.

The Lacquered Talisman: A novel of fourteenth century China, Laurie Dennis (Earnshaw 2020)
The Lacquered Talisman: A novel of fourteenth century China, Laurie Dennis (Earnshaw 2020)

A sweeping coming-of-age epic, The Lacquered Talisman launches the story of one of the most influential figures in Chinese history. He is the son of a bean curd seller and he will found the Ming Dynasty, which ruled China from 1368-1644.

After the Nobel Prize 1989-1994: The Non Fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz, R Neil Hewison (trans), Rasheed El-Enany (intro)
After the Nobel Prize 1989-1994: The Non Fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz, R Neil Hewison (trans), Rasheed El-Enany (intro) (Gingko, July 2020)

Naguib Mahfouz was familiar to newspaper readers across Egypt for his column in the leading daily Al-Ahram, in which he reflected on issues of the day, from domestic and international events, politics and economics to culture. This volume brings together his articles written between January 1989 and the knife attack in October 1994 that almost ended his life.

Nonlocal, or Youth and Night, Christophe Bolduc (Gymnasia Press, July 2020)
Nonlocal, or Youth and Night, Christophe Bolduc (Gymnasia Press, July 2020)

Concerning education, Nietzsche asked, “How can the individual be integrated into the counterpoint of private and public culture; how can he both sing the melody and simultaneously make it the accompaniment?” At its core, this is the same question that Nonlocal explores.