Adult Readers Archives - Page 5 of 154

What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW While novels told from an animal’s point of view are that unusual, an entire story collection with non-human narrators seems rare. Even more striking is the stupendous quality of Talia Lakshmi Kolluri’s breathtaking debut. Deep bonds define Kolluri’s heart-pulling protagonists, who too often face...

The Family Izquierdo by Rubén Degollado [in Booklist]

30 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

Their collective story begins in McAllen, Texas, just seven miles from the U.S./Mexico border. For generations before, Octavio Izquierdo’s predecessors “used to come and go, crossing freely, still in their own country,” before an “imaginary line” delineated nations and separated families. In 1958, Octavio is claiming “a...

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin, translated by Jamie Chang [in Booklist]

29 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Already a prestigious bestseller in Korea, Kim Hye-jin’s impassioned novel about the meaning of family – by blood, by choice – marks her English-language debut, seamlessly translated by National Book Award longlister Jamie Chang. A mother is desperate to help her thirtysomething daughter, an...

Planes by Peter Baker [in Booklist]

26 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Italian, Moroccan, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Palestinian American Lameece Issaq expertly ciphers debut-novelist Peter C. Baker’s quartet with equal conviction beyond geographies, genders, and backgrounds. In Rome, Amira – born Maria, now a convert to Islam – works in a shop and returns to an empty apartment because her immigrant husband...

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li [in Booklist]

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, European, Fiction, French, Repost

Yiyun Li’s fiction since her son’s tragic suicide seems to have catapulted her away from the Asian roots that define her earlier award-winning fiction. Her latest begins on a pastoral farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Agnès, known as the “French bride,” lives with her husband...

The Fervor by Alma Katsu [in Booklist]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Historical horror master Alma Katsu augments an already terrifying occurrence – the U.S. imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during WWII – by crafting this intricately plotted supernatural-tinged thriller. To underscore the reality, Katsu’s dedication points to her mother “for her stories of childhood...

Cicatrix by Elle [in Booklist]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Cicatrix, or scar, encompasses multilayered meanings in queer, Manila-based artist Elle’s U.S. debut. They begin with “a firm bump … just below [their] left ear, about the diameter of a five-peso coin” – and a confession that “every time I get sick, I always think...

Talk to My Back by Yamada Murasaki, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Booklist]

22 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Initially serialized in Japan between 1981 and 1984, this is considered the late Yamada Murasaki’s most famous work; it’s also her first to arrive in the U.S., translated by notable manga historian Ryan Holmberg. Decades since its introduction, the slice-of-home-life bildungsroman remains hauntingly relevant...

After Lambana: Myth and Magic in Manila by Eliza Victoria, illustrated by Mervin Malonzo [in Booklist]

19 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Conrad needs help. He’s suffering from a fatal disease, and mitigating the excruciating agony is all he can do. Ignacio seems to be his only hope, navigating him through the Manila streets where humans – and other beings – pass between worlds. Beyond the last...

Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Erika Kobayashi, translated by Brian Bergstrom [in Booklist]

18 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Tokyo-based author/artist Erika Kobayashi makes an intriguing, albeit uneven, translated-into-English debut, enabled by Canadian Brian Bergstrom. The consequences of Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are manifest in three generations of an all-female Tokyo family. Kobayashi’s novel takes place on a single day, following the schedule...

Such Big Dreams by Reema Patel [in Booklist]

16 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Novelist Reema Patel and narrator Lavanya Gandhi prove ideally paired, symbiotically making their debuts. Patel, a Toronto lawyer with experience in Mumbai’s human-rights legal sector, draws on her experiences to create Rakhi, a 23-year-old office assistant at Justice for All. Rakhi caught the attention of...

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Debut author Belinda Huijuan Tang's immigrant father is a gregarious storyteller, especially about his rural Chinese upbringing, but he has one story he's never been able to finish, about his lost father. Tang empathically transforms that incomplete memory into her exquisite novel, A Map for...

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

14 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Nell Young, former New York Public Library cartography scholar, is summoned back to the hallowed Map Division when her director father is found dead in his office. Seven years ago, he ignominiously fired her over the Junk Box Incident and she’s hasn’t seen him since....

A Career in Books: A Novel about Friends, Money, and the Occasional Duck Bun by Kate Gavino [in Booklist]

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Nina, Silvia, and Shirin’s “now-mythical friendship origin story” began at NYU in their freshman writing workshop. As the only Asian Americans, they initially avoided each other, until a class trip to the New York Public Library led to a coincidental bathroom break that led to...

Only the Cat Knows by Ruyan Meng [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Through the first half of her spare, intricate novella Only the Cat Knows – recipient of the 2020 Red Hen Press Novella Award – Ruyan Meng brilliantly builds a mounting sense of claustrophobia. A factory worker labors hard every day but is unable to...

Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Author Emiko Jean transfers the effusive charm of her YA novels (Tokyo Ever After; Tokyo Dreaming) into her first adult fiction, Mika in Real Life. At age 35, Japanese American Mika is once again jobless. Her career's been inarguably erratic, serially fired from a donut shop, nannying, writing ...

Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Booklist]

08 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, Banana Yoshimoto (born 1964) debuted as one of Japan’s youngest literary phenoms. In the decades since, she continues to produce brilliantly relevant fiction, notable for an open, accessible simplicity that belies revelatory observations about life, love, happiness, and more. Her latest...

Joseph Smith and the Mormons by Noah Van Sciver [in Booklist]

07 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Award-winning Noah Van Sciver shares in his author’s note he was born into an LDS family descended from a husband of Brigham Young’s daughter, Elizabeth. After his parents’ divorce when he was 12, he began to learn “about Joseph Smith and everything that [his]...

The Missing Word by Concita De Gregorio, translated by Clarissa Botsford

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

Widower, widow. Uxoricide. Orphan. Patricide. Infanticide. And yet missing from that harrowing vocabulary is a word for “parents who lose children. Who don’t murder them, but lose them.” Irina becomes that kind of grieving parent when her 6-year-old daughters vanish. She’s recently separated from husband Mathias,...

Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Riku Onda, translated by Alison Watts [in Shelf Awareness]

02 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Following the notable success of The Aosawa Murders, prolific, award-winning Japanese author Riku Onda reunites with translator Alison Watts for Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight, another riveting, tightly plotted psychological thriller. "This, I guess you could say," the novel opens, "is the story of a photo." That...

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