Fiction Archives - Page 2 of 172

Big Man and the Little Men by Clifford Thompson [in Booklist]

23 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Award-winning memoirist, essayist, and visual artist Clifford Thompson gets full-color graphic in his hand-drawn debut that piercingly bares the behind-the-scenes manipulations of a contentious presidential campaign. April Wells is an Oprah-endorsed Black author recognized by autograph-seeking admirers, but as she sits weeping in her therapist’s...

The Liminal Zone by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

22 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Beyond the countless corpses, Japanese manga auteur Junji Ito’s latest import deftly – and, of course, ever so gruesomely – highlights the liminal spaces between life and death, good and evil, waking and sleep. An engaged couple’s innocent decision to “stop somewhere on a whim” during...

To Strip the Flesh by Oto Toda, translated by Emily Balistrieri [in Booklist]

21 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Oto Toda’s first manga collection translated into English presents four short stories and seven “two-page manga” that range from poignant to gruesome, whimsical to surreal. The titular “To Strip the Flesh” is the most developed, about a YouTube star who butchers freshly-shot game on camera....

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed, translated by Deena Mohamed [in Booklist]

20 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Egyptian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Egyptian artist and writer Deena Mohamed deservedly won the Best Graphic Novel and the Grand Prize at the 2017 Cairo Comix Festival for Shubeik Lubeik, the title explained as “a fairy tale rhyme that means ‘your wish is my command’ in Arabic.” Mohamed herself...

Ghost Music by An Yu [in Booklist]

19 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

A thought-to-be-missing piano prodigy recalls an old friend who “used to quote [Oscar Wilde] a lot. He said to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people only exist.” In An Yu’s follow-up to her lauded debut, Braised Pork (2020), also an atmospheric study in...

Black Paradox by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Four strangers – Taburo, Pii-tan, Baracchi, Maruso – gather for the first time and embark on their “journey to paradise”: “We met on the suicide site Black Paradox, and now we’re each other’s final companions.” The quartet’s reasons for seeking death suggest strange parallels: “So the...

Twelve Percent Dread by Emily McGovern [in Booklist]

17 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Irish, Repost

Irish cartoonist Emily McGovern’s sophomore graphic novel slyly examines screen-dependent twentysomethings stumbling through London life. At 25, Katie still lacks steady employment (and income). She rents a small room with gender-fluid, not-working artist Nas in has-been actor Jeremy’s townhouse. Katie and Nas are ex-best friends who...

Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel by Edmund White, adapted by Brian Alessandro and Michael Carroll, illustrated by Igor Karash [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Edmund White, arguably the godfather of gay literature, has published dozens of lauded titles over the last half-century. His autobiographical trilogy of gay identity – A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997) – remains a classic. With this volume, the...

The Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi, translated by Emily Balistrieri [in Booklist]

15 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Reminiscent of Groundhog Day-like repetition, each chapter duplicates the same opening paragraphs, ending with the same “gross love language” (but watch for that perspective shift). The intriguing premise is that an unnamed university junior in Kyoto reveals how he “accomplished absolutely nothing” in his first two years....

Before Your Memory Fades [Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 3] by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot [in Booklist]

12 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Short Stories, Translation

In the third installment of the internationally best-selling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, some of the familiar crew from Tokyo’s Café Funiculi Funicula move to Hakodate’s Café Donna Donna on Hokkaido after its proprietor, Yukari Tokita, leaves indefinitely for the U.S. to help a young...

She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori [in Booklist]

06 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Multiple shes and cats populate this gratifying, slim novel-in-stories, which arrives with a decades-long history that undoubtedly underscores its timeless appeal. Makoto Shinkai launched his career as one of Japan’s most lauded animation and manga artists with the five-minute film, She and Her Cat (1999), later expanded...

Saha by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang [in Booklist]

05 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Town was once a fish-farm village, but it’s now internationally known for the corporation that aggressively expanded it into a bustling city-state. Here, class stratification is impermeable. Su is a Citizen. Do-kyung is a Saha, an inconsequential resident of the crumbling Saha Estates who...

All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson by Charles Johnson [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Prodigious National Book Award-winning, 1998 MacArthur “Genius” Charles Johnson is now in his 70s, having been repeatedly lauded in multiple genres. Perhaps not as well known is that Johnson began his literary career as a cartoonist (in high school!) – and never stopped drawing,...

When Everything Turned Blue by Alessandro Baronciani, translated by Carla Roncalli di Montorio [in Booklist]

03 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Italian, Nonethnic-specific, Translation, Uncategorized, Young Adult Readers

Marco, Chiara remembers of her close friend, “was not afraid ...

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman [in Booklist]

02 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Among the perennially relevant, permanently indisputable pioneers of the graphic genre is Art Spiegelman, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus remains a groundbreaking masterpiece. The provenance for that achievement is a 1972 three-page strip, included in this celebrated historical compilation, which was first published in 1978...

Three Assassins by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Malissa [in Booklist]

01 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Kotaro Isaka has written dozens of award-winning, internationally bestselling novels and story collections. This, his third Anglophoned title, is notably narrated by versatile actor Adam Sims, who earnestly embodies former math teacher Suzuki, transformed by the senseless murder of his beloved wife. Her killer remains...

The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy [in Booklist]

30 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

*STARRED REVIEW Sarayu (just Sara at her English university) has a scholarship so tight that she dreams of telling her benefactor how “an extra hundred pounds would make not the tiniest difference to his life but would transform [hers].” She finds comfort – not to mention...

The Sense of Wonder by Matthew Salesses [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

PEN/Faulkner finalist Matthew Salesses, a transracial Korean adoptee, again distills his own experiences with race and (e)masculinity for laudable literary inspiration in The Sense of Wonder. His intricate novel spotlights three basketball players at different points of their careers – starting out, at the pinnacle,...

The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Ghanaian, Ghanaian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers ...

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Eleanor Brown’s (The Weird Sisters) latest is certainly good, focusing on a “Very Special Family” of four siblings and their three sets of adoptive parents committed to keeping the children together through Sunday dinners, holidays, and now an all-family, two-week vacation. And here’s where...

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