As is so often the case, when Tibetans fled their homeland for Nepal and India, they thought to return in their lifetime. Their homes in these new lands were in what were hoped would be temporary refugee camps. Decades later these camps have now become permanent and Tibetans work in jobs that revolve around the…
The trend of novelists to base stories on mythology and the ancient classics—Greek myths, the Iliad, and Beowolf—has more recently been extended to Asian sources. Young adult and middle grade literature, usually au courant with publishing trends, has also begun to embrace Asian mythology in recent years, with three new novels published just this spring.
It’s a spring evening in 1921 in Bangalore. Nineteen year-old newlywed Kaveri Murthy is dining with her husband at the posh Century Club when there’s a murder.
Uneven terrain, low levels of oxygen, avalanches, and frigid weather are just some of the things to worry about on a Himalayan mountain more than 8000 meters high. When murder is added to the mix, it can be downright terrifying. Children’s author Amy McCulloch turns to adult fiction with her new mystery, Breathless, set on…
Epistolary novels can be hard to pull off: backstory and other details wouldn’t ordinarily be part of a letter. Kelly Kaur is aided in this in Letters to Singapore, her novel centered around a young university student who—paralleling the author’s own life—leaves home to study in Calgary, by setting the story in the mid-1980s, a…
The stories in Chinese/American/Australian writer Paige Clark’s debut collection, She Is Haunted, deal with relationships—both romantic and those between mothers and daughters—and mortality. The lead story is titled “Elisabeth Kubler-Ross” after the psychiatrist who framed the five stages of grief. Many of the female characters are named Elizabeth, including a Paige Elizabeth, or variations of…
If you thought the Taobao in the title of this new collection of stories is that Taobao—China’s version of Amazon, except perhaps more so—you’d be right. The shopping website is mentioned throughout the collection, showcasing the unprecedented availability of consumer goods in China regardless of quality or practicality.
In Matthew Teller’s new travelogue, Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City, he explains that while Jerusalem’s Old City is known for its four quarters—Muslim, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish—this is a simplification that doesn’t recognize the many other ethnic and religious groups that make this city so unique. As the title…
Young adult novels often highlight teenagers’ angst with identity issues. While this phenomenon may seem American with its focus on ethnic identity, there are other diasporas in other places. Chesil’s debut novel, The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart, in an English translation by Takami Nieda, tells such a story set…
Drawing on the Chinese classic novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s debut novel is a beautifully-written if haunting story set in coastal Shandong province, San Francisco and Idaho. Eight years ago Jenny Tinghui Zhang learned from her father, after he traveled through Idaho, of the brutal murders of Chinese men in the…
Di Renjie or Judge Dee (as he’s better known in Western popular culture) was a Tang Dynasty magistrate first fictionalized in an anonymous 18th-century Chinese detective novel. Dutch diplomat author Robert van Gulik translated and popularized the character in a series of novels beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s. The character…
As the Japanese advance through China in 1938, a young widowed mother aims to flee her Changsha home in 1938 for the relative safety of the newly-established capital of Chongqing. But first Meilin and her four-year-old son Renshu must escape in one piece.
Laura Gao was born in Wuhan and spent her first four years with grandparents in China while her mother and father studied in the US. When she reunites with her parents, she finds herself in the strange land of Texas where teachers and new classmates can not pronounce her Chinese name, the only name she…
Stradivarius violins are the most coveted in the world and for good reason. Four hundred years ago, Antonio Stradivari created violins and other string instruments in his studio in Cremona, Italy. It’s estimated that about half of the 960 violins he made still survive. Since this expert “luthier” lived during the Age of Enlightenment, could…
Paris in the late 1940s was a time of rebuilding. It was also central to the nascent Communist party in Cambodia. Justin Clark’s new novel, The Zero Season, captures this period in a style reminiscent of Graham Greene with its political tension, complicated love story, and colorful settings.