“In the Meadow of Fantasies” by Hadi Mohammadi
From her bed, a young girl gazes up at a mobile of seven spinning horses.
“Fifty-Five Pillars, Red Walls” by Usha Priyamvada
Fifty-Five Pillars, Red Walls, Usha Priyamvada’s debut novel, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, is a seminal work of feminist literature, and a cult classic among middle-class Hindi readers. Released in 1961, the book is one of the most well-known literary pieces set in Delhi, and one of the first translations to come from Indian…
New Book Announcement: “Strange Bedfellows”, a novel by Liu Zhenyun
Strange Bedfellows, a novel by Liu Zhenyun, China’s most renowned writer of satire, and translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin, is a farcical tale of sibling devotion, sexual exploitation, and official corruption, all played out more or less in bed. Though a critique of new mercenary values, scam artists, and the common folks’ vulnerability…
“Lemon” by Kwon Yeo-sun
With its opening scene of a hard-boiled interrogation of murder suspect Han Manu, Lemon seems to be setting the reader up for yet another rote exercise in crime fiction. And the reader follows the cues, according to convention: skeptically receiving the detective’s attributions of guilt to a clearly confused Manu, suspecting that the murder of…
Two Epics: “Samak the Ayyar” and “The Tale of Princess Fatima”
If you happen to have a few hours to spare and a swash to buckle, here are two rousing epic adventures from Persia and the Middle East to fill in the time. If we think of Persian epics, the two titles which probably come to mind are Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and Vis and Ramin by Fakhruddin…
“Whisper” by Chang Yu-Ko
Wu Shih-sheng is a taxi driver, sinking in debt and living in a cockroach-infested metal shack in the outskirts of Taipei with his wife, Hsiang-ying. When she dies in a mental hospital, after claiming to have been hearing the voice of a ghost threatening her life and that of their daughter, Shih-sheng decides to dig…
“Strange Beasts of China” by Yan Ge
The unnamed narrator of Yan Ge’s novel Strange Beasts of China, a former zoology student-turned-fiction writer, resides in the fictional city of Yong’an, somewhere in southern China, described as “a huge, filthy, ungovernable city, full of all sorts of beasts of unknown origin, and secrets, likewise.” Yong’an perhaps resembles the concrete jungles of nearly every…
“Monkey Man” by Takuji Ichikawa
A summer 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted thirty years of worsening climate impacts—and that nothing can be done to stop it. Heat waves. Droughts. Wildfires. Flooding. Given bleak environmental news, staggering global inequality (the world’s richest 1% hold more than 40% of the world’s wealth), a resurgent refugee crisis, and…
“Temple Alley Summer” by Sachiko Kashiwaba
Not many novels open with the narrator peeing out the window. But Kazu, the protagonist of Sachiko Kashiwaba’s newly translated Temple Alley Summer, is an unapologetically average kid. His classmates nickname him “third” because he is third in his class, in sports, and in popularity. He’s just fine with that.
“Bullet Train” by Kotaro Isaka
Kotaro Isaka’s thriller Bullet Train moves as fast as the train—the Shinkansen—it takes place on and is named after. Already destined to be a movie starring the not-very-Japanese Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock (one imagines some changes en route), Bullet Train, a guilty pleasure if there ever were one, is something of a cross between…
“In the Shelter of the Pine: A Memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu and Tokugawa Japan” by Ogimachi Machiko, translated by GG Rowley
If you are in Tokyo and you’re riding on the Yamanote Line, you are likely heading to one of the major shopping destinations on that line, such as Shibuya, Shinagawa, or Tokyo Station. If you are going to Tokyo Station, you will pass through Komagome, once a place in the country where people had villas…
Women in translation month: August 2021
A compilation of reviews and other coverage in the past twelve months for Women in Translation month (August 2021): by author, translator and language, including non-fiction and poetry and well as novels and short stories.
“Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror” edited by Ian Rowen
“Violence composes a fundament of modern Taiwan history,” opens Ian Rowen’s introduction to Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror. In the almost forty years during which Taiwan’s authoritarian ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), kept the country under martial law and suppressed any form of political dissent, thousands of citizens—including alleged proponents of Taiwan’s…
“Paper-thin Skin” by Aigerim Tazhi
Aigerim Tazhi is a Kazakh poet whose writings will impress you and move you, a new and exciting voice which, thanks to the work of James Kates, a distinguished translator of Russian, can now finally be heard in English. It goes without saying that the literature of Central Asia and the newly-independent countries of the…
“Vessel” by Cai Chongda
It was perhaps inevitable that Chinese memoirs in translation would move on from those whose authors date from the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution. Cai Chongda is a popular millennial writer and fashion executive who became the youngest editorial director in the GQ franchise. His memoir, Vessel, was a bestseller in China a…
