“Godzilla and the Songbird” by Manzu Islam
Manzu Islam’s Godzilla and the Songbird stands as a mosaic of myth and modernity in which the protagonist’s life can be an allegory of the journey of post-colonial East Pakistan to Bangladesh.
“Nine Yard Sarees” by Prasanthi Ram
Migration, especially in literature, is normally seen as having “the West” as its destination. Migration within Asia, from the less affluent to richer places, appears far less often. Singapore, for example, has had a long history as a trading port drawing in merchants and laborers from East Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Singapore’s colonial…
“The Healing Season of Pottery” by Yeon Somin
The Soyo Workshop is a pottery studio outside of Seoul that takes its name from the words for wedging clay and firing clay in a kiln. Yeon Somin has set her second novel, The Healing Season of Pottery, in the Soyo Workshop and the quaint neighborhood where it’s situated. Similar in structure and tone to…
“The Unfilial: Four Tragic Tales from Modern China” by Yao Emei
In her latest collection of short stories set in contemporary China, award-winning writer Yao Emei reveals that, as goes the song, “it’s hard to be a woman”, but not just sometimes: all the time. Alternately macabre, heart-rending and shocking, the four tales comprehensively skewer the aspirational notion of the happy family. No matter how hard…
“Table For One” by Yun Ko-eun
Eating out alone in Korea is not the done thing: minimum orders are often for three or four, and restaurants have an intensely communal atmosphere. Some coffee shops and restaurants have installed giant plush Moomins, Pengsoos and other characters so that solo drinkers won’t feel so alone (this may have inspired the cover of Table…
“Where The Wind Calls Home” by Samar Yazbek
A severely injured nineteen-year-old soldier caught at the frontlines of the Syrian Civil War tries to piece together his life as he waits for aid that may never arrive. As he inches toward death, he recalls the minor and major events of his life and his country that led him so close to death. Told…
“Ruined a Little When We Are Born” by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Tara Isabel Zambrano has published widely in literary journals, mainly stories that center around mothering in one fashion or another, usually set in India or with Indian characters in the diaspora. Now she’s compiled these stories and more in Ruined a Little When We Are Born, which continues with the theme of mothering.
“Water: a Chronicle” by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư
Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s second novel, and the first to be rendered in English by Nguyễn An Lý opens with a mysterious description.
“Koan Khmer” by Bunkong Tuon
Bunkong Tuon’s debut novel Koan Khmer is a coming of age story of a young Cambodian immigrant, Samnong Sok, who ultimately finds himself on a writer’s journey, not unlike the author himself.
“Gifted” by Suzuki Suzumi
In Suzuki Suzumi’s new novella, an unnamed woman plods through her routine life while the ghosts of her traumatic past resurface, to her increasing dismay. Translated from Japanese by Allison Markin Powell, Gifted was shortlisted for Japan’s respected Akutagawa Prize, making its English release highly anticipated. With a style both clinical and aloof, the novella…
“The Lantern of Lost Memories” by Sanaka Hiiragi
Now available in an English translation by Jesse Kirkwood, Sanaka Hiiragi’s The Lantern of Lost Memories, a story set in a photography studio that belongs in a space between the world of the living and the afterworld, is the most recent example of Japanese “comfort fiction”.
“A Touch of Salt” by Anita Agnihotri
Anita Agnihotri’s newest novel, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, traces the trajectory of salt from its use as a symbol of resistance against the British Empire in the 1930s to the exploitation of salt farmers in modern-day India. Spanning generations and juggling various points of view, A Touch of Salt is an ambitious novel…
“Yñiga” by Glenn Diaz
Glenn Diaz’s second novel is set in the busting-at-the-seams capital of Manila, in a district named only as T—, characterized by “the density, the closely packed, in-your-face life that sometimes felt like drowning.” Diaz’s complex female protagonist is ex-academic Yñiga Calinauan, now reduced to ghost-writing theses for foreign students. She also believes in astrology which…
“Faraway the Southern Sky” by Joseph Andras
Hô Chí Minh was also a poet. From 1890-1969, Hô Chí Minh lived many lives in his seventy-nine years, a broad range of diverse roles and contributions that have attained a continued worldwide influence, from anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninst revolutionary, Vietnamese nationalist, political leader, philosophical thinker, newspaper founder, and columnist. His complete published writings available in English…
“The Real Osamu Dazai: A Life in Twenty Stories”
There is a tendency with Osamu Dazai, who in his lifetime struggled with addiction and ultimately committed suicide, to focus on the more overwrought and confessional elements of his prose, hoping to find a mirror of the tragedy of his life in his writings. For his dedicated readers spanning the globe, the relatable elements of…