Fiction Archives - Page 54 of 172

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah [in Library Journal]

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Arimah's debut collection comprises a dozen surprising, affecting stories. Narrator Adjoa Andoh sublimely intensifies the author's already breathtaking prose into an irresistible, spectacular performance, as she effortlessly modulates her distinctive voice, picking up genders and generations, cadences and accents, and just as easily discards...

A Bride’s Story (vols. 8-9) by Kaoru Mori, translated by William Flanagan

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Central Asian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Without a doubt, A Bride's Story is the most intricately detailed, magnificently exquisite graphic series currently on my shelves. Every volume is a lavish gift to pore over, to enthusiastically applaud, to be gobsmackingly impressed by again and again and again. Superlatives just aren't enough. To...

Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley [in Library Journal]

22 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Emma Gregory, with her impressive range of Anglophone accents – differentiated by age, region, country – is the ideal conduit for the 10 nuanced, exquisite stories in Tessa Hadley's (The Past) latest collection. Loss of innocence looms large in many of the pieces, from a...

All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan [in Library Journal]

21 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Israeli, Jewish, Palestinian, Repost, Translation

Gabra Zackman narrates with intense intimacy, as if fully aware what she's reading is more than mere words on the page. This electrifying love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man continues to inspire global headlines – it's earned author Dorit Rabinyan (Persian...

The War Bride’s Scrapbook: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston [in Booklist]

17 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Caroline Preston collaged combinations of vintage photos, drawings, clippings, advertisements, and all manner of 1920s tidbits in The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (2011), onto which she overlaid the text of her titular heroine’s peripatetic adventures-into-adulthood. In her sophomore scrapbook presentation, Preston displays the left-behind...

10 Diverse Debut Story Collections [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, Black/African American, British, British Asian, Caribbean, Chinese American, Fiction, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lists, North Korean, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Translation

Short-story collection The Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri’s first published book, won the Pulitzer Prize. Phil Klay’s debut collection, Redeployment, got him the National Book Award. Even Tom Hanks got in on the short story game with his debut book, Uncommon Type, out last month. Right now, eyes are...

Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas by Pamela Ehrenberg, illustrated by Anjan Sarkar [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Jewish, Repost, South Asian American

Being part of a Jewish and South Asian Indian family surely has delicious perks: "Making Indian food that my mom ate as a kid for a Jewish holiday that my dad grew up with – that was a lucky combination." For the first-night-of-Hanukkah meal, a...

Inheriting the War: Poetry & Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees edited by Laren McClung [in Booklist]

14 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

"The language of war turns the other into an object – the language of literature humanizes,” writes Laren McClung in her introduction to a collection featuring 61 contributors (and five translators) – 62 counting Yusef Komunyakaa’s resonating preface – each intimately affected by the Vietnam...

Margarita Engle’s Cuba for Young Readers [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Jewish, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

President Obama’s historic December 17, 2014 order to “normalize relations” between the United States and Cuba began the restoration of diplomacy after more than half a century of hostile restrictions. His 72-hour visit to Havana in March 2016 – the first made by a sitting...

The Vanishing Princess: Stories by Jenny Diski [in Booklist]

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Although Jenny Diski is renowned across the pond, her defiant treatise against her terminal cancer, In Gratitude, published just before her 2016 death is, ironically, what earned her substantial stateside acclaim. Now available posthumously to U.S. readers is her spectacular 1995 collection of bizarre-to-rueful-to-stunning stories, bookended by...

A Dozen Diverse Debut Novels [in The Booklist Reader]

08 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Lists, Repost

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. White Teeth by Zadie Smith. What do these novels have in common? All were debuts, and all earned coveted awards, plaudits, and significant sales numbers. For those of you watching the prize and bestseller...

The Watcher: Inspired by Psalm 121 by Nikki Grimes, illustrated by Bryan Collier [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Poetry, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW For those unfamiliar with "golden shovel" poems, here's how they work: choose an existing poem, then create a new poem by ending each line with the exact words, in order, of the original poem. Here, Coretta Scott King Award winner Nikki Grimes opens with Psalm...

A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee [in Library Journal]

06 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

*STARRED REVIEW The five "narrative parts" of this work, designated only with Roman numerals, comprise five styles: short story; first-person, faux memoir; folktale of sorts; 10-parts-plus-epilogue novella; and no-punctuation vignette. The connections require attention, with results well worth the reader's intriguing participation. An Indian American professor's tragedy-ensuing...

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo [in Library Journal]

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Columbia undergrads Lucy and Gabe meet in a Shakespeare seminar – on 9/11. Their class – including the professor who glibly asks if the pilot was drunk when his TA announces the first tower crash – is as yet unaware of the devastating reverberations to...

Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell [in Library Journal]

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Samantha Schweblin, who is Buenos Aires-born and now lives in Berlin, makes her English-language novel debut, thanks to McDowell's crisp translation. Worms, migrating souls, unseen toxins, and deformed children punctuate a mysterious dialog between Amanda, a dying woman in an emergency clinic, and David,...

New Boy [Hogarth Shakespeare] by Tracy Chevalier [in Library Journal]

02 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Internationally lauded for historical novels (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Tracy Chevalier takes a surprising narrative path as she returns over the Pond to her capital birth-city (she’s been British-domiciled for decades) with the Bard in tow: Chevalier’s privileged fifth graders play out Othello...

The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan + Author Interview [in Bloom]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Café Leila & Beautiful Ruins: Q&A with Donia Bijan “Strange things happened when I returned to Tehran in 2010 after thirty-two years in exile,” writes Donia Bijan in her recent essay, “The Women’s Hour.” Traveling with her sister, she found her childhood home – the hospital their father built...

Mad Country: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay [in Library Journal]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nepali, Nepali American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Vikas Adam’s remarkable chameleonic range proves ideal for Samrat Upadhyay’s (Arresting God in Kathmandu) latest superb collection, set mostly in Nepal. Exceptionally gifted with accents, Adam could easily be mistaken for a multi-person cast; he's effortlessly convincing as a disappointed father, a female inmate,...

Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell [in Library Journal]

27 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

Helen receives a call from her "Uncle Geoff" (although she's unsure of how they're related) that her 29-year-old adoptive brother has killed himself. Both Helen and her brother were adopted as babies from Korea by a white – some might add willfully culturally illiterate –...

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies [in Library Journal]

26 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Six Four, the first available-in-English-translation novel from Japanese phenomenon Hideo Yokoyama, requires serious commitments of time and memory space. It runs over 24 audible hours, with so many pertinent players that the print version includes a densely-populated “Cast of Characters.” Dead and missing daughters populate this exquisitely...

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