Despite the steady stream of works of all genres now being translated into English, it can still take a long time for even the work of award-winning authors to show up in the West. Twenty years ago, novelist and playwright Yukiko Motoya’s novella, Love at Least, was published in Japan and was nominated for the…
When Dawn Chin is assigned a high school history project to interview a family member, she picks her paternal grandmother and learns more about her family history than she expected, including a couple of life-altering secrets. All the lies, all the secrets, the masks her family wears, the ones she puts on too, like a…
It’s not hard to picture the leap Monona Wali made from filmmaker to writer after reading her latest novel, Sutra Americana, a cinematic story of an Indian family that immigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. Continuing well into the 2000s, the story is at heart about how long it can take for…
Usha and her husband Om are part of a Gujarati community in Coimbatore and the parents of three grown children: sons Ashmit and Romit and a daughter named Pari. Om is co-owner of a textile store and takes his role seriously as head of his household even though all three children have moved out. As…
Rosa Kwon Easton’s debut novel, White Mulberry, tells the story of Miyoung, a Korean nurse who passes as Japanese while living and working in Japan as World War II erupts. In that book, Miyoung learns to do whatever she can to protect herself from danger. In the newly-published sequel Red Seal, which takes place across…
During the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, hate crimes against Asian American women included some particularly gruesome murders. In March 2021, a man shot and killed six Asian women at two massage parlors and a spa. In January 2022, Michelle Alyssa Go was pushed by a man onto the subway tracks in New York…
In the 1930s, up to 20,000 European Jews turned to Asia for refuge before Japan entered the war as an Axis ally. Shanghai was the best-known destination, but the Philippines also played host to hundreds of German-speaking Jews. Mark Sy recounts this lesser known example of geopolitical empathy in The Manila Poker Club: Eisenhower, Quezon,…
Mitya New’s earlier career as a foreign correspondent in Hong Kong, China, and Europe and his present position at universities in Hong Kong and India were evidently good preparation for his debut novel, Beyond Mount Kailash, an engaging story of a cross-cultural marriage that takes a different path from the typical Asian expat story. Maria…
The unusual word “limerence” in the title of Momo Yamaguchi’s debut novel is never in fact used in the book itself. It is a term coined by a psychologist in the 1970s and which hasn’t yet entered common parlance, requiring it to be defined on the book’s back cover—“the state of being obsessively infatuated with…
At first glance, Minyoung Kang’s new book, Plant Lady, might be mistaken for yet another addition to the Korean comfort fiction genre. After all, Shanna Tan has translated Korean novels set in bookshops, laundromats, and photo studios, to name but a few. On the cover of the US edition of Plant Lady, a young woman…
Inter-War Paris was a mecca for artists from around the world, including East Asia and, in particular, the then French colony of Indochina. Thao Thai’s new novel, The Seekers of Deer Creek, centers around a fictional Vietnamese painter and a portrait he created decades ago. The story is part mystery, part family drama, but it’s…
Shah Rukh Khan is such a well-known Indian actor that his name is likely to be recognized even by people who are not devotees of Bollywood films. Lavanya Lakshmi pays homage to a 1995 Shah Rukh Khan film, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (or DDLJ as she has it), in her debut novel, Leave and Come…
Tom Lin’s debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, paid homage to the American Western, with a Chinese twist, and his lyrical writing style is well suited to the cowboy culture of the American Wild West. He’s back with Babylon, South Dakota, a novel just as colourful as his first. Where his first novel…
While it can certainly be awkward for book reviewers to meet authors after having panned their books, these are not usually life-altering experiences. But the same cannot be said for the protagonist in Zen Cho’s novella, The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, a lighthearted story which nevertheless in many respects brings to mind Eileen Chang’s…
Of the many questions Japanese American internees were asked before they would be released from the World War 2 camps were Questions 27 and 28. Question 27 asked if men were willing to serve in the US military and Question 28 asked internees to renounce their loyalty to Emperor Hirohito. The interrogation of minority groups…