*STARRED REVIEW “Although the characters in this novel are fictitious,” the final sentence of Hage’s (Carnival, 2013) spectacular novel acknowledges, “this is a book of mourning for the many who witnessed senseless wars, and for those who perished in those wars.” For the Lebanon-born, Canadian-domiciled, International...
As the oldest daughter of a German mother and Nigerian father in a small Nigerian town where everybody knows everybody, Olivia has valued books as windows to a life beyond. While anticipating boarding school in big-city Lagos, Olivia dreams of “all kinds of adventures,” Enid...
*STARRED REVIEW Following The Art of Death (2017), a reflection on her mother’s passing and writing, Edwidge Danticat focuses this haunting eight-story collection on, well, death. Looming death becomes a bargaining chip in “Dosas,” when an ex-husband begs his ex-wife to help save her kidnapped replacement, and in “In the Old...
*STARRED REVIEW In just over a year, three Sok-yong Hwang titles – Familiar Things (2018), Princess Bari (2019), and this novel – have arrived Stateside, each indelibly, adroitly anglophoned by Seoul-based Sora Kim-Russell. Lauded by Nobelist Kenzaburō Ōe as “undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the...
June is #ImmigrantHeritageMonth, which began in 2014 and has been recognized and celebrated by the (Obama) White House as “a time to celebrate diversity and immigrants’ shared American heritage” since 2015. “Immigration,” the White House declares, “is part of the DNA of this great nation.” Perhaps now more than ever...
*STARRED REVIEW Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest Anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2009) intends exactly that universality. Initially, small things disappeared – “Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp.” What didn’t just...
With four books by Asian American authors, Penguin Classics finally recognizes a long-overlooked genre of American literary and cultural tradition. During the first week that the film adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club hit screens across the United States in 1993, I sat in...
Despite my Korean heritage, I don’t read the language well enough to enjoy Korea’s latest, greatest titles. Thankfully, notable Korean-to-English translators, especially Sora Kim-Russell, Deborah Smith, and Chi-Young Kim, enable all Anglophone audiences to discover – and for many of us, become ardent fans of...
Professor Frunz isn’t much of a teacher – nor are his students particularly engaged. While he rushes through an architectural tour of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, one student repeatedly asks which details will be on the midterm while another plots how she’ll become the next, Pritzker...
“I’m still getting used to the idea of being a writer”: Q&A with Angie Kim True confession: A few years ago, our mutual friend, the writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee (not a Bloomer – Marie had a first-ever YA fiction multi-book deal with a major publisher in...
Reminiscent of Arthur Schnitzler’s late-19th-century play La Ronde (and the dozens of multi-genre adaptations since), Helon Habila’s (Oil on Water, 2011) fourth novel is a round-the-world journey that links disparate, desperate strangers. An unnamed African history scholar (his PhD pending) and his American wife, Gina, relocate from Arlington,...
Ready for some double duty? As you may know, May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (woo-hoo! happy me!). Additionally, May is also #MysteryMonth at Booklist. To celebrate, here’s a list that hasn’t been done before on The Booklist Reader: mysteries and thrillers by #OwnVoices APA writers. I know, such...
He’s had almost two dozen names, yet his story was forgotten for 40 years. More recently, despite their violent 20th-century histories, four countries – China, Japan, and his native Korea, now cleaved into North and South – all claim him as a local hero. Perhaps best...
P.J. Ochlan returns to voice the internationally bestselling Japanese author’s latest to arrive Stateside. Previously the voice of Detective Galileo in another series by Keigo Higashino, Ochlan assumes the second of the Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series following Malice in 2014. With Higashino’s signature vast casts, Ochlan’s...
The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...
The eerie chill factor proves unrelenting throughout Sophie Mackintosh’s 2018 debut, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and is further intensified by three formidable narrators who take turns revealing the dissolution of an isolated, splintered family. Grace, Lia, and Sky are three daughters – their...
His voice isn’t quite growling, but David Shih has perfected the notable ability to suggest deep, underlying anger without crossing into full-blown fury. That control makes him Wesley Yang’s ideal conduit in this debut collection of 13 essays that lay bare Yang’s exasperation, indignation, doubt,...
*STARRED REVIEW In 2015, A Manual for Cleaning Women collected 43 stories Lucia Berlin left before her 2004 death, making her an overnight – albeit posthumous – literary sensation. Here are 22 more, presented in some semblance of chronological order, mirroring Berlin’s own peripatetic exploits (Texas,...
Since Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, hundreds of adaptations have followed, but Soniah Kamal is the first to set the affair in Pakistan, her birth country. Meet feisty girls’-school English-literature teacher Alys Binat and arrogant Valentine Darsee. The rest is ...
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault In the decades since its 1985 publication, Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, ballet incarnations, and, most recently, the wildly popular television series (which veers significantly from the original, ahem). Given the evergreen...
