Strangers by Taichi Yamada, translated by Wayne Lammers [in AsianWeek]
An entertaining ghost story with a twist about a recently divorced television script writer who takes to visiting his parents … except they died tragically in
an accident decades ago, leaving him an orphan from childhood. The...
The yakuza genre, or gangster films, have more or less replaced samurai films in both quantity and popularity in Japan. Schilling, a Japan Times film reviewer since 1989, brings together all the...
A striking, original collection of multi-layered short stories about life caught between the old and modern, between expectations and hopes, between dreams and reality. The opening story, “Gopal’s Kitchen,” is especially poignant about a...
Eleven essays capture almost a half-century of Nobel Prize-winning Naipaul’s literary life. The final essay, “Two Worlds,” which he begins and ends by invoking Proust, is the lecture he gave when accepting the Nobel...
The long-awaited debut novel by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, begins in 1968 with newlyweds-by-arrangement Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli living in Cambridge, Mass. They name their first child Gogol,...
In another British import of a debut novel, Manicka draws from her own history to create a family saga of four generations and 70 years. At the family’s core is its matriarch, Lakshmi, who...
Hong Kingston’s much awaited new book begins with the calamitous fires in the Oakland-Berkeley hills of October 1991 that strike as she is driving home from her father’s funeral –...
Capturing her rollicking journey through India’s phenomenal Bollywood industry, journalist Hardy recounts the glitz and glitter of stars, their starlets, directors and various groupies as she searches for elusive pretty-boy, mega heartthrob Hrithik Roshan.
Review:...
What might be considered a companion collection to
A runaway bestseller in its native Britain and quickly climbing the charts on this side of the pond, Ali’s assured debut novel follows the life of Bangladeshi-born Nazneen, who arrives at age 18 in...
Born Hiranyagabha Chakraborti in 1857 during the time of the Indian Mutiny (when Indians rebelled against the ruling British) on the same day of his father’s death, Hiran (as he comes to be called)...
Her Bum Is on Fire: Jessica Hagedorn debuts with her latest novel
After years of chatting on the phone and sending various e-mails back and forth, I finally got the chance to meet writer extraordinaire...
Living in the Space of 'In-Between': In any language, author Yoko Tawada is easily understood
If I wanted to make my mother truly proud, I would finally complete either of the...
Gathering History for the Future: A Profile of Curator & Historian Franklin Odo
Building Character: Susan Choi re-emerges with her second novel, American Woman
In many ways, Susan Choi’s life has been a series of unpremeditated choices. “I didn’t set out to bring my life into line with...
Forget your stereotypical visions of the meek and timid Japanese housewife who waits for her salaryman husband with slippers in hand and dinner on the table. Meet Masako and her fellow night-shift food processing plant co-workers...
The woman who inspired the Taj Mahal had all but been lost to history until Sundaresan recreated her in her historical novel The Twentieth Wife, released earlier this year in paperback. Sundaresan...
The follow-up to the award-winning A Bridge Between Us, Shigekuni's newest novel tells the haunting story of Lily Soto, a young Japanese American woman who appears to have the perfect life with her adoring...
An intriguing collection of interviews with one of the most brilliant minds today. Originally broadcast on KGNU in Boulder, Colo., the interviews cover such topics as the so-called peace process, the 2000...