“Where the Wild Ladies Are” by Matsuda Aoko
Angry women hold a special place in Japanese folklore. Many of Japan’s best-known tales are about “vengeful ghosts”, almost always women, who wreak havoc on the living for some perceived wrong.
“Gaijin” by Sarah Z Sleeper
Lucy Tosch regrets her decision to relocate to Okinawa even before she leaves the United States. She applies on a whim for a reporting job at a newspaper catering to the American community in Okinawa after Owen, her Japanese college boyfriend, suddenly ups and leaves without so mu ch as a by-your-leave. Sarah Z Sleeper’s…
“Estuary” by Perumal Murugan
Perumal Murugan’s Kazhimugham is an ugly novel. Ugly, that is, as Umberto Eco would have it: its subject is ugliness and it is a work that the author claims breaks the conventional rules of beauty.
“The Law of Lines” by Hye-Young Pyun
Se-oh Yun—a reclusive young woman in her twenties—comes home to a fire in her apartment in which her father is badly injured. He dies shortly after the incident and the police are eager to close the case as a simple suicide motivated by her father’s debts. But Se-oh suspects foul play when she learns that…
“Beauty” by Christina Chiu
Novelists are often admonished to “write what you know”; Christina Chiu instead decided to know what she wrote. The Asian-American writer now has a sideline as shoe designer, something she learned as an integral part of writing her most recent novel set in and around the fashion industry.
“One Left” by Kim Soom
A Korean nonagenarian learns on the news that the last remaining “comfort woman” is on her deathbed. The narrator, unnamed until the end of the book, is determined to meet this last victim: she wants to know if she knew the woman from 70 years earlier. She also wants to assure her that she’s not…
“Kintsugi” by Anukrti Upadhyay
The title of Anukrti Upadhyay’s new novel is a Japanese word that literally means “to join with gold”. It is the art of repairing things that are broken to create strong, beautiful fault lines. These lines remain as reminders of something that was vulnerable. The lines in Kintsugi are visible right at the beginning when…
“A Lover’s Discourse” by Guo Xiaolu
An unnamed narrator addresses her lover: “I didn’t know your name when we first met. No one introduced us. The only thing I remember is that you were picking roadside elderflowers.” The relationship between the young Chinese narrator and “you”, the elderflower picker, progresses quickly and their relationship, from living on a houseboat to exploring…
“Bestiary” by K-Ming Chang
Bestiary opens with a quest for lost gold. Agong, to whom the gold belongs, has no recollection of where he stashed the two bars. His family upturns the yard in pursuit of the misplaced treasure, first by digging holes, then with a metal detector.
“Bluebeard’s First Wife”, stories by Ha Seong-Nan
Tragedy finds its ideal form when a good character is partially responsible for her own downfall, which should unfold with the slow and inexorable force of a moral sentencing. Or so said Aristotle. Likewise, an irresistible blend of pity, horror, and satisfaction emerges through each of Ha Seong-nan’s short stories in this new collection. Even…
“The Last Story of Mina Lee” by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Nancy Jooyoun Kim’s debut novel, The Last Story of Mina Lee, is a unique immigrant story that takes place in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. Kim traces not just the struggles of adapting to a new country but also the tragedies Mina leaves behind in Korea.
“The Glass Kingdom” by Lawrence Osborne
American Sarah Mullins, an erstwhile mousy brunette turned blue-eyed blonde, has just pulled off an obscure literary fraud, netting a suitcase of cash and needing a place to hide out, which is why Lawrence Osborne’s most recent novel opens in a luxury apartment in an upscale residential tower block in Bangkok known as “The Kingdom”.
“A House is a Body”, stories by Shruti Swamy
A House is a Body is the first book-length outing for two-time O Henry Award-winner Shruti Swamy. Most of the stories have been published separately before in such journals as The Paris Review, but they take on a particular strength when arranged together in a collection. Some take place in India, others in the West,…
“The Cat and the City” by Nick Bradley
Is it possible to capture the essence of a city as large as Tokyo in a single book? Debut author Nick Bradley pretty much manages exactly that with this exceptional collection of intricately connected short stories.
“Mother Land” by Leah Franqui
Swati is the last person Rachel Meyer expects to find at her front door in Mumbai. Swati is also the last person Rachel’s husband, Dhruv, expects to find at home after work one day. Swati, a native of Kolkata, is Dhruv’s mother and Rachel’s mother-in-law, and she’s moving in. So starts Leah Franqui’s novel, Mother…
