Over the last thirty years, Shanghai has been demarcated by the two sides of the Pudong River, the almost-futuristic Pudong and the historic Puxi. These two areas inspire the title of Aube Rey Lescure’s impressive debut novel, River East River West, a story of people more complicated and layered than they may first appear, set…
It’s difficult not to compare Kotaro Isaka’s third novel in his loosely connected trilogy to Bullet Train, the book and film that put the series on the map. The Mantis, translated by Sam Malissa, centers around a veteran hitman and includes the same lightheartedness and plot twists of Bullet Train, but stands on its own…
Edogawa Rampo (or Ranpo) was one of the most prolific Japanese mystery and crime writers of a century or so ago, and his work has remained in the public eye, whether in Japanese film, manga, video games, or translations. Born Taro Hirai, in 1923 he made his literary debut under a pen name chosen in…
T his time last year, Penguin Southeast Asia released Amado V Hernandez’s first novel The Preying Birds (Mga Ibong Mandaragit), a classic of modern Filipino literature that had somehow more or less missed the attention of international publishers up to that point. This has been followed, in just the space of just twelve months, with…
In 1921, Somerset Maugham and his partner Gerald Haxton traveled throughout Asia, which included a sojourn in Penang. Maugham gathered personal stories from people he met in Malaya that would inspire his fictional work, The Casuarina Tree, a collection of six stories published in 1926.
Savyon Liebrecht’s novel, The Bridesman, opens with the narrator on a flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv. It’s been twenty-four years since Micha left Israel for the United States and he’s heading back on an all-expenses-paid invitation from his beloved aunt Adella. Liebrecht’s novel, translated from the Hebrew by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann, is a short…
Art imitating life, or is it the other way around? Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character so popular and ubiquitous in popular culture that he almost seems real; many, indeed, have thought him so. Samuel L Clements, by contrast, was a real man so flamboyant, omnipresent and iconic that he can seem almost fictional, a…
When Lee Yeongju burns out at work and leaves her husband, she finds solace in pursuing her childhood dream of opening a bookshop. Her goal is to bring joy to other readers in Seoul and to get back into reading, a pastime she enjoyed back in middle school before she got caught up in the…
Of all the Indian epics, the Ramayana is the best- known: Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, is banished from his kingdom by a jealous stepmother. His wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana choose to accompany him. During the exile, Sita is abducted by Ravana, the king of Lanka. With the help of Hanuman and a…
Divided into two parts set in Iran and the US respectively, Dare the Sea is a new collection of stories from Iranian-American writer Ali Hosseini. The stories, some of which had previously appeared in Guernica, Antioch Review and Story Quarterly, explore Iran’s landscape, culture and how cataclysmic, socio-political changes have shaped the identity and sense…
Four people at a Hyderabad newspaper publishing company drop dead from heart attacks on the same day. It’s not impossible that people could have heart attacks on the same day, but the timing seems suspicious to the police, namely the lead investigator, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mona Ramteke. This is the lead-in of Aditya Sinha’s…
The toy walkie-talkie set Amiko receives on her tenth birthday, one that she bounces with excitement to use with her yet-to-be-born brother or sister, is never successfully played with; there always fails to be a coherent response from the other end. Through flashbacks and snappy dialogue, Natsuko Imamura’s novella This is Amiko, Do You Copy?…
Earlier this month, Toho Studios released “Godzilla Minus One”—the 37th film in the now almost seven-decade-old franchise. Godzilla has gone through many phases over the past 70 years: symbol of Japan’s nuclear fears, cuddly defender of humanity, Japanese cultural icon and, now, the centerpiece of another Hollywood cinematic universe.
Taha Kehar’s recent novel, which unfolds over a protracted party on a single night, revolves around six estranged friends, family members and a “mystery guest”. In order to fulfill the final request of the titular, but recently-deceased, Nazia, her sister Naureen has invited five people to celebrate her death rather than attend a funeral, as…
As Buddhist scriptures have it, when Gotami, the Buddha’s foster mother, asked for ordination from the Buddha, he refused. The Buddha’s cousin and disciple, Ananda, intervened: since, according to the teachings of the Buddha, women were capable of achieving awakening, they must be let into the monastery. The Buddha, outsmarted, let the women into his…