Adult Readers Archives - Page 10 of 154

A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Melissa Chadburn's electrifying debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, opens with gruesome death: "Dying hurts like f*ck-all everything." The description comes from "Aswang," a shape-shifting creature of Filipinx folklore, who knows "about the slow agonies of death" because she reanimates the body of 18-year-old Marina,...

The Every by Dave Eggers [in Booklist]

27 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Dave Eggers’ voice-of-choice Dion Graham again convincingly ciphers the author’s newest white-woman protagonist, Delaney Wells, an employee of The Circle’s (2013) Mae Holland. Here the Circle has exploded into the Every, the world’s most ubiquitous conglomerate, which continues to develop manipulative mechanisms to subtly...

New and Selected Stories by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker, Lisa Dillman, Francisca González Arias, Alex Ross, Cristina Rivera Garza [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Cristina Rivera Garza, one of Mexico's most important contemporary authors, is progressively gaining renown in the U.S. (where she's lived since 1989) and has won a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship and a 2020 National Book Critics Circle finalist nod in Criticism. Indie press Dorothy's release of New...

Violets by Kyung-sook Shin, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

24 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Mention of Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club sets this novel in 1999, when Oh San turns 23 that summer. She left her childhood village years ago, haunted by the memory of a best friendship’s wrenching cleaving. After being repeatedly abandoned by her mother,...

A Sister’s Story by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

Award-winning Italian writer Donatella Di Pietrantonio made her English-language debut with the lauded A Girl Returned, deftly translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (revered for her elegant Elena Ferrante translations). Author and translator return to the characters from their earlier collaboration with A Sister’s Story, another...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 2: From Turkey to Greece by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

22 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé opens the second of three volumes featuring Syrian refugee Hakim and his extended family with a clever recap of the first entry, facilitated by Toulmé’s young daughter, who asks to accompany him for the next interview: Toulmé lays out...

Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead [in Booklist]

18 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Fiction, Repost, Translation

The mutable, esoteric art world is again the setting for award-winning Argentinian María Gainza’s latest, deftly translated by British writer-editor Thomas Bunstead, who also English-enabled her award-winning Optic Nerve (2019). Gainza’s narrator warns early on, “Any person reading this ought not to expect names, numbers,...

Homicide and Halo-Halo [Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery 2] by Mia P. Manansala [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost

Cozy mystery label aside, Mia P. Manansala's enticing second installment of her toothsome Tita Rosie's Kitchen series opens with a warning: "I wrote Homicide and Halo-Halo while both me and my protagonist, Lila, were in rather dark places in our lives." Introduced – and nearly...

Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf by Malika Moustadraf, translated by Alice Guthrie [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Moroccan, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf is a crystalline collection by defiant Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf (Wounds of the Soul and the Body), who died in 2006 at 37. Moustadraf's piercing 14 stories here, which challenge patriarchal expectations of gender and sexuality,...

Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani [in Booklist]

15 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Polyglot Yoko Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, introduced an ursine character named Knut in Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016) and opens her newest import with a same-named protagonist. Whether or not the two are related seems unlikely, yet in Tawada’s fascinating tale,...

Iranian Love Stories by Jane Deuxard, illustrated by Deloupy, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger [in Booklist]

14 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, French, Iranian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

“I assure you, this country is a paradise for women,” a covered figure insists, her arms raised in a victorious V. But this is Iran, and her declaration doesn’t quite resonate with the local population. Two journalists – a couple publishing under the collective pseudonym...

Quake by Auður Jónsdóttir, translated by Meg Matich [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Icelandic, Repost, Translation

Quake, by Icelandic Literary Prize-winning author Auður Jónsdóttir (The People in the Basement), is an engrossing, multi-layered mystery in which memories – imagined, erased and recovered – determine the future of a fractured family. Jónsdóttir introduces the protagonist in various scenarios in the novel's opening...

City of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves and Carlos Ruiz Zafón [in Booklist]

10 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Repost, Spanish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW In addition to Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s standalone Marina (2015), Daniel Weyman previously narrated The Labyrinth of the Spirits, considered the finale to the internationally bestselling Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Weyman – his continuity is especially affecting – returns for Ruiz Zafón’s posthumous collection of...

The Verifiers by Jane Pek [in Booklist]

09 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese American

Her boss calls Veracity “a personal investments advisory firm,” but to Claudia Lin, “a month into the job, it’s obvious to me that our clients think of us as a detective agency.” What she’s hired to do is verify details for clients who don’t quite...

Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In Thank You, Mr. Nixon, her second irresistible collection of short fiction, Gish Jen (The Resisters) showcases 11 intricately linked stories spanning the East and West over a half-century. The titular opening story is a letter recalling the U.S. president's 1972 visit to China that...

Ish by Adam de Souza [in Booklist]

04 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Canadian cartoonist/illustrator Adam de Souza gathers three previously published zines – ish (2017), and so you write it down (2018), and coda (2021) – to forge a loose journey confronting devastating loss and subsequent attempts at moving forward. In a narrative divided into brief vignettes, de Souza initially presents...

Manywhere by Morgan Thomas [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Morgan Thomas's profound debut, Manywhere, is partly dedicated to "anyone who's gone looking for themself in the archives." In nine remarkable stories, Thomas adamantly and sublimely commits four centuries of the genderqueer/trans existence to the page. In "The Daring Life of Philippa Cook the Rogue,"...

Call Me Cassandra by Marcial Gala, translated by Anna Kushner [in Shelf Awareness]

02 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Fiction, Repost, Translation

Greek mythology's princess Cassandra was given the power of prophecy, but when she refused the advances of the god Apollo, she was cursed forever with disbelief. Millennia later, a slight, blond 10-year-old in Cienfuegos, Cuba, insists, "I don't want to be this Raúl, I want...

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto [in Booklist]

31 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Indonesian American, Repost, Singaporean American

As the photographer for the extended Chan clan’s wedding business, Meddelin (a well-intentioned approximation of Madeleine) is intimately familiar with all manner of nuptial celebrations, even when they include accidental murder, as witnessed in Dial A for Aunties (2021), Jesse Q. Sutanto’s rollicking debut, which introduced Big...

The Final Case by David Guterson [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

David Guterson (Ed King; Snow Falling on Cedars) returns to the courtroom with The Final Case. His opening note outlines the real-life 2011 trial of parents in Skagit County, Wash., charged with the death of their adopted daughter from Ethiopia. The author "attended the trial, and conducted...

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