“Green Mountain: Poems” by Yang Jian, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Many Chinese poets, ancient or modern, seem to Western readers sometimes obsessed with landscapes, and Yang Jian (born 1967) is no exception.
“Shoko’s Smile: Stories” by Choi Eunyoung
Choi Eunyong’s best-selling Shoko’s Smile has earned her comparisons to novelists such as Sally Rooney and Marilynne Robinson for the collection’s carefully crafted portraits of women’s relationships and intimacies formed and dissolved over time.
“Lady Joker” by Kaoru Takamura
Among the most unsettling words that can come at the end of a 600-page procedural crime thriller are: “End of Volume One”.
“The Membranes” by Chi Ta-wei
People worried about the end of the world during the 1990s. The end of the millennium provided the perfect milestone for the superstitiously-minded, with some becoming convinced that midnight on 31st December, 1999 would not ring in the changes, but rather the apocalypse.
New Book Announcement: “In the Shelter of the Pine: A Memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu and Tokugawa Japan” by Ōgimachi Machiko, translated by GG Rowley
In the early eighteenth century, the noblewoman Ōgimachi Machiko composed a memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, the powerful samurai for whom she had served as a concubine for twenty years. Machiko assisted Yoshiyasu in his ascent to the rank of chief adjutant to the Tokugawa shogun. She kept him in good graces with the imperial court,…
“The Book of Charlatans” by Jamāl al-DīnʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Jawbarī, translated by Humphrey Davies
Year in year out Spain produces 1,500 kilos of that delicate spice, saffron, sold wholesale for US$700 per 100 grams. Gourmets were puzzled a few years back when 1900 kilos of Spanish saffron hit the market. Food inspectors soon discovered that the yellow powder contained traces of the flavorless plant root, or worse, animal droppings….
New Book Announcement: “Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play”, translated by Regina S Llamas
Top Graduate Zhang Xie is the first extant play in the Chinese southern dramatic tradition and a milestone in the history of Chinese literature. Dating from the early fifteenth century, but possibly composed earlier, it is the work of a writing club called the Nine Mountain Society.
“The Woman in the Purple Skirt” by Natsuko Imamura
There is a growing interest in a behavioral phenomenon the Internet has dubbed “main character syndrome”. Whether motivated by narcissism or a healthy sense of self-worth, some people live as though they were the hero in a fictional story and interact with the world around them as though they were its center. The narrator of…
“Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853” by Toru Haga
Few nations can boast eras of peace and prosperity as long as the Tokugawa period in Japan, which lasted almost 300 years from the 17th through 19th centuries. Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853 by renowned Japanese studies professor Toru Haga offers a detailed and nuanced portrayal of life under the strict rule…
“Things Remembered and Things Forgotten” by Kyoko Nakajima
When grieving is over, when no one pauses to remember, things will be forgotten forever.
New Book Announcement: “A Son of Taiwan: Stories of Government Atrocity”, edited by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin
In many ways, Taiwan presents a compelling example of how autocratic regimes impose their will on a population, often as colonial overlords. A peaceful island peopled by Austronesians and ethnic Chinese, rich in agricultural output, has been a geopolitical pawn in recent history, first by the Japanese and then the defeated regime of Chiang Kai-shek…
“Heaven” by Mieko Kawakami
Heaven is excruciating. Readers share viscerally in the protagonist’s victimization at the hands of sadistic bullies. Fans of Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami’s first novel published in English in 2020, might be expecting another women-centered narrative. Heaven is radically different. This time, an unnamed male narrator describes his appalling position in the social hierarchy of…
New Book Announcement: “The Membranes: A Novel” by Chi Ta-wei
It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to…
“Lonely Castle in the Mirror” by Mizuki Tsujimura
Kokoro can’t bring herself to go to school anymore. She has been the victim of an intense bullying campaign that culminated in a destructive assault on her home; if the bullies find her, she is afraid they will drag her outside and kill her. Kokoro is twelve years old.
New Book Announcement: “Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror” edited by Ian Rowen
Taiwan’s contemporary commitment to transitional justice and democracy hinges on this history of violence, for which this volume provides a literary treatment as essential as it is varied. This is among the first collections of stories to comprehensively address the social, political, and economic aspects of the White Terror and to do so with deep…
