Lake Geneva in 1816 is home (in two rented properties) to five English travelers, three made eternal through their writing, one among that trio renowned for creating (inhuman) life, literally. Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein there, accompanied by her poet husband Percy Shelley, fellow poet Lord Byron,...
“We have to learn from history and stop repeating its mistakes” As the child of two Chinese refugees, Helen Zia can personally speak to the effects of displacement, separation, adaptation, and reinvention. In her memorable career as activist/journalist/writer/Asian American icon, Zia turns inward for the first time in...
*STARRED REVIEW The story might sound familiar – the 1991 L.A. riots – but Steph Cha ("Juniper Song" series) alchemizes headlines into a riveting thriller about two families colliding over injustice, while narrators Glenn Davis and Greta Jung transform the written word into mesmerizing performances. Shawn Matthews...
After successfully reporting on global hot spots, mostly in Asia, the Pulitzer Prized, bestselling power couple Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Half the Sky, 2008) turn westward to Kristof’s hometown, Yamhill, Oregon, a rural community where a quarter of Kristof’s Number 6 school bus...
Japan’s literary superstar Mieko Kawakami (Ms Ice Sandwich, 2018) significantly expands her 2008 Akutagawa Prize novella, notably translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. Her writer-wannabe protagonist’s names are prescient homages: Natsuko (summer child) references poet Ichiyō Higuchi, aka Natsuko Higuchi, who appears on the...
Bestselling Korean author Mi-ae Seo uses her screenwriting chops in The Only Child, a tautly plotted creepfest that already feels celluloid-ready. Making her English-language debut, Seo delves into the minds of those on opposite sides of the law. The incarcerated serial killer Yi Byeongdo, who...
*STARRED REVIEW As a Superior Court judge, among Jeong Jin Wu’s most difficult tasks is to resolve divorce petitions and face “the burden of having to deal with another family’s misery.” His latest case involves an opera celebrity and factory worker desperate to terminate their almost-10-year...
*STARRED REVIEW British TV-film-stage-even-video-games-actor/comedian/novelist Stephen Fry is a consummate storyteller. Yes, he’s got multiple bestsellers on the page, including this latest: choosing from the godly Greek pantheon certainly provided divine inspiration, replete with the utmost in family dysfunction including bed-hopping (although, who needs beds?!), Sisyphean feats...
Set in 1920s Catalonia, the permeability of social classes – upstairs/downstairs style – gets played out in a Spanish seaside villa. The gardener, who has outlasted multiple “masters” over decades, narrates “six summers and one terrible winter” from when Barcelona almost-newlyweds take possession until the...
The title originates in poet Jamila Osman's essay, "A Map of Lost Things": "A map is only one story," writes the Canadian-born daughter of Somali immigrants who now lives in Portland, Ore. "It is not the most important story. The most important story is the...
After decades of glimpsing autobiographical hints in his always intriguing, often surreal novels and short stories, Anglophone audiences get access to Yan Lianke's real life. Haunted by the passing of the men in his father's generation, Yan – one of China's most awarded, lauded authors...
Everything here sounds off-kilter – on purpose. Discomfort pervades the reading, whether conversations are awkwardly not-quite-synched between speakers, or sentences spoken in an (unnamed) Caribbean island patois are made purposefully wooden and German words and phrases become virtually unintelligible. That jagged performance, however, seems integral...
A granddaughter and her grandmother take turns narrating: “If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.” What emerges is the ominous history of 20th-century Việt Nam told through four generations of a single family. As...
*STARRED REVIEW Already an international bestseller, television scriptwriter Cho Nam-Joo’s debut novel has been credited with helping to “launch Korea’s new feminist movement.” The fact that gender inequity is insidiously pervasive throughout the world will guarantee that this tale has immediate resonance, and its smoothly accessible,...
Already an internationally recognized, award-winning art historian and filmmaker, Nana Oforiatta Ayim makes her literary debut with The God Child, a compelling and ambitious novel. Through narrative jumps in time and place, as well as jarring disruptions in multiple languages (most notably, untranslated Twi and...
Afaf Rahman, the principal of suburban Chicago’s Nurrideen School for Girls, takes a few minutes alone for prayers, until gunshots shatter her peace. Palestinian American Sahar Mustafah’s first novel opens with the terror of a school shooter and concludes with Afaf’s eventual return to her...
b, Book, and Me by Kim Sagwa and translated by Sunhee Jeong Although this book is set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer...
Author Young-Ha Kim, translator Krys Lee (herself an award-winning writer; Drifting House), and actor David Shih repeat the triumvirate success of Kim’s I Hear Your Voice to deliver his latest collection of four chilling, engrossing stories. The eponymous, novella-length “Diary of a Murderer” – the best of an...
*STARRED REVIEW In under 200 pages, Canadian poet Souvankham Thammavongsa showcases 14 spectacular stories in her fiction debut. Born to Lao parents in a Thai refugee camp and raised and educated in Toronto, Thammavongsa parses her own culturally amalgamated heritage through most of her narratives here,...
Once upon a time – before social media, before digital traces and imprints – death meant an end. Not so much for Lucas after his friend Margo dies by speeding taxi. The unlikely (nonromantic) pair – coworkers at a tech start-up where Margo is the...
