Little orphan Teodora promises her dying godmother to look after her worthless bed-hopping son. Raised Cinderella-style in a small village in Colombia, Teodora willingly enslaves herself to ensure handsome but immoral Galaor's every comfort, and not surprisingly falls madly in love with him. 'Love is...
Less is indeed more in Palestinian writer Adania Shibli's U.S. debut-in-translation. The deceptively minimal 72 pages of touch hold layered shards from a young girl's life, some shining with promise, others sharp with painful gravity, but undoubtedly an existence shattered at seemingly regular intervals by violence and...
*STARRED REVIEW At the core of 1Q84 is a spectacular love story about a girl and boy who briefly held hands when they were both 10. That said, with the fiercely imaginative Murakami as author, the story’s exposition is gloriously labyrinthine: Welcome “into this enigma-filled world...
Just after finishing Divisadero, I immediately found myself missing Hope Davis' voice – she who so lullingly narrated Michael Ondaatje's dream-like bifurcated drama. So what a comforting surprise to click on Ann Patchett's Wonder and find Davis' voice gently streaming out of my headset! Serendipity indeed! As the...
Regardless of what is actually happening on the page (even brutality, sometimes tragedy), Michael Ondaatje's writing is something akin to a velvety, soothing dream. In a perfect world, reading (or better yet, listening to ...
Ready for the final three? Talk about total creep-fest ...
The pace picks up rapidly (in spite of a few too many explanatory inner babbling bubbles) in the second half of one of the most popular manga series ever, endless spin-offs and all! In vol. 7, Kira #3 and his Notebook are now in the hands...
I'm probably one of the last readers on earth to have managed to avoid this international (posthumous) publishing phenomenon. I might as well confess right now that I never finished the Harry Potter series, either (made it through the first three with gritted teeth, but...
What serendipitous timing that I chose to post Kevin Wilson's debut novel right after an interview with Jessica Hagedorn: Wilson's next public appearance, according to this website schedule, is on September 18 at the Brooklyn Book Festival with none other than the inimitable Mz. Hagedorn!...
When I first met the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn eight years ago – her 2003 novel Dream Jungle, in which Hagedorn intertwines the alleged discovery of an ancient "lost tribe" in the remote hills of the Philippines with the problematic filming of Apocalypse Now, was just...
Back when Kenji and the gang were young enough to be concerned about little more than just having fun, an equally young Fukube was trying very, very hard to be included. When sharing his extensive, pristine manga collection doesn't get him invited to "secret headquarters,"...
The slim, startling volume begins with an aged, family photograph which essentially contains the contents of the pages that follow ...
Need some freak-out adventures you can't put down? Time to continue the Death Note series with four more volumes that will get us to the half-way mark of this international phenomenon – in addition to the expected mega-million copy sales, anime and live-action spin-offs, novelizations, etc....
Here are the two most important things I got out of Snow: 1. it definitely had memorable glimpses of Turkish social and cultural history that I had little to no knowledge of previously; 2. Orhan Pamuk is a clever, intelligent writer, which – given his array...
Here I go again starting with a book backwards … in the ending “Translator’s Note,” Paul Starkey writes, “Readers of Maryam’s Maze who are already familiar with the author’s short stories will quickly feel themselves at home in this more extended work, which again reveals...
During a term I spent as a grad student in Yokohama, Japan, I wandered every free afternoon through nearby Tokyo with camera in hand. Knowing my time was limited, I even planned out a detailed schedule for which neighborhood (Tokyo is sprawling!) I would go...
We all probably have a little bit of devil in us, but what do you do when you find out that your birthfather is Satan himself? Twin brothers (and, not surprisingly, polar opposites), Rin and Yukio, have been raised all their lives by Father Fujimoto,...
When I handed this striking volume to my son (as I often do with most graphic titles, as they seem to be the best way to get him to read), he instantly replied with "oh, I read that already." I insisted that couldn't be possible as...
Confession: in spite of every good intention, I haven't yet seen the eponymous show for which this book is billed as a "Companion to the Public Television Series." That said, this gorgeous volume clearly stands alone ...
The Pope is on his way to Japan in time for the opening ceremony of the 2015 World Expo ...
