Set against a variety of conflicts from the past century, author and academic Sunny Singh pays tribute to the courage and strength of victim-survivors of war, whose voices mostly go unheard because the victors control the narrative.
This new collection with an unbeatably eye-catching title opens with the eponymous novella. “Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers” takes more than a few (albeit short) chapters to get to the heart of the story: the red-light district in Kashi (also referred to as Varanasi or Banaras in the novella) is slated to be shut down to…
At a demolition site in modern-day Osaka, workers unearth an old air raid shelter, sealed for decades. Inside, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr, The Tragedy of the Funatomi by Yu Aoi, and other classic mystery novels are wrapped in a faded cloth, embroidered with “House…
The opening panels of the manga Miss Ruki show the title character working from home processing medical insurance claims. In a voice so dry it verges on sardonic, an unseen narrator explains that Miss Ruki finishes projects weeks earlier than her boss thinks she does, so she spends most of her time reading books from…
A family has gathered in a mansion to discuss the inheritance of a wealthy grandfather’s estate. It is a familiar mystery setup, and one that risks cliché, but Yasuhiko Nishizawa takes it into exciting new territory in The Man Who Died Seven Times. Nearly the whole story occurs within a single repeating day, much like…
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,…
Bornean-Australian novelist, playwright, poet, rapper and visual artist Omar Musa comes with a bit of a pedigree. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and for the Miles Franklin Award. He was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
A collage of epigraphs make up the first few pages of The Elsewhereans. Each subsequent chapter is heralded by a series of locations, dates, photographs, and quotes—some perhaps falsified. Jeet Thayil’s newest work is exactly what its subtitle—“A Documentary Novel”—claims: a partially-fictional documentation of Thayil’s family history, recorded scrapbook-style in bits and pieces. Dedicated to…
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…
Nine years in the making, Jemimah Wei’s debut novel is a complicated story of two sisters who found and lost each other amidst the busy, urban, competitive island of Singapore. It provides a glimpse of Singapore without the glitz and glamour, a Singapore in which the expectation of excellence drives a wedge through even the…
Izumi lost her husband and her job. Now she spends her time doing craft projects like sewing handmade stuffed animals. She has come to realize that she spent 20 years acting the role of “successful woman”
It never rains but it pours. From having no English translations of Akutagawa Prize-winning Rie Qudan, three of her novels have (or soon will have) become available in a matter of months, the first two—“Schoolgirl” and “Bad Music”—in a combined volume from Australian publisher Gazebo and Sympathy Tower Tokyo from Penguin in Britain and Summit…
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…
New Story of the Stone by Wu Jianren is one-part fan fiction, one-part historical fiction, and one-part science fiction. A full translation by Liz Evans Weber gives English-language readers access to the early 20th-century novel and a fascinating perspective on a moment in China’s history that speaks volumes about its present and possible futures.
Brahm Saxena summons his family—his wife, daughter and son—to announce that they, especially the children, should not expect anything from him as inheritance. Rohit, the son, is rattled but Tara, the daughter, is financially independent and doesn’t bother about what she doesn’t feel entitled to.