"On a continent of many songs, in a country shaped like the arm of a guitarrista, the rain drummed down on the town of Temuco [Chile]," the invitingly dreamy Dreamer begins. Neftalí Reyes, the eponymous dreamer, is most content to live in a world of stories,...
Kanna, Otcho, and Manjome are all in the same room – you could say even on the same side. The final words from Manjome leave everyone speechless: "Please ...
At 91, Ptolemy Grey is "waiting to finally be a man." as he writes in his last letter, addressed to his young charge and heir Robyn. The novel begins backwards with an "Afterward" that summarizes the whole of Ptolemy's nine-decades-plus, but to understand why he's...
On the kitchen wall is taped a large sign: "My name is Dr. Jennifer White. I am sixty-four years old. I have dementia. My son, Mark, is twenty-nine. My daughter, Fiona, twenty-four. A caregiver, Magdalena, lives with me." What else should you know without telling you...
This interlinked story collection by Uganda-born, Stateside MFA-ed Doreen Baingana is a family affair that explores the lives of three sisters, their diverse paths, and their eventual return home. The two bookended stories introduce the family in the opening "Green Stones," only to end with...
Here's an immigration story that took me by total surprise: German-speaking Mennonites from Mexico who work as migrant laborers in Canada. To understand just how many levels of peripatetic displacement that involves, you have to read this fascinating (mega-award-winning!) book backwards. "Canada and the United States were...
The three-part manga adaptation of Dazai Osamu's classic semi-autobiographical novel of human disconnect concludes here with utter fear and loathing. To catch up to this point, click here for the first two volumes. Yozo Oba, now 22, is living so blissfully with his lovely young wife Yoshino...
Handpicked by Nobel Laureate Kenzaburō Ōe for his eponymous Ōe Prize in 2009, Nakamura – who has also previously garnered many of Japan’s other top awards (Noma Literary New Face Prize, the coveted Akutagawa Prize) – makes his Stateside debut-in-translation. Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction,...
Ah, this day of mislaid Hallmark hearts ...
Nanfuka wants nothing more than to finish her education and become a nurse – the first in her village. While still a child herself, the teenager is suddenly forced to leave school and thrust into adult responsibilities when she is called home as her father...
Here's a dilemma: If you knew how much a book series might deteriorate by its final title, would you read all the way through to the bitter end? As contrary as I am, I probably would ...
Still a young teenager, Alinda knows only too well the potential horrors of war ...
As her name suggests, Wild Rose is no wallflower. She's too busy running through the meadow spooking the sheep, avoiding lightning, whirling in the wind, splashing in the rain's leftover rivers, to answer her grandmother's call to come learn to weave. While Wild Rose enjoys...
I confess the main reason I finally plucked this debut novel (written by its author when he was just 23) from my never-shrinking 'to-read' pile was because I found the audible version is narrated by Indian American actor Firdous Bamji. After finishing Amitav Ghosh's The...
Ever since the fabulous audible version of No More Dead Dogs kept my then-backseated young 'uns highly entertained through many a traffic jam, Gordon Korman holds special favor on the contraptions that have taken over their now-teenage ears. [Pop, by the way, earned a double rave.] Oldster me is still laughing along...
Being in the throes of adolescence, my two teenagers have little they agree on ...
As Janie weeps over her first-ever separation from her mother, who is about to give birth, her grandmother admonishes her with the grave responsibility Janie must bear for her new sibling. "In our family ...
I think I will forever remember this book, perhaps not so much for the story, but for a single word: a blind young man sitting in the dark with hands running across the pages answers when asked what he's doing ...
Doh! For some reason, I had no idea the other-worldly adventures of the Picasso/Chiaki dynamic duo [pocket-angel Chiaki directs the surviving Picasso towards doing good deeds for his fellow students] was a trilogy. I figured on a few more years of diving into secret sketches since...
Considered together, this collection of 15 stories is a welcome statement of women's literary empowerment. The second anthology published by FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers' Association founded by novelist/short story writer/playwright-turned Ugandan Cabinet member Mary Karoro Okurut and officially launched in 1996, is testimony that "Ugandan women...
