Polyglot Yoko Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, introduced an ursine character named Knut in Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016) and opens her newest import with a same-named protagonist. Whether or not the two are related seems unlikely, yet in Tawada’s fascinating tale,...
“I assure you, this country is a paradise for women,” a covered figure insists, her arms raised in a victorious V. But this is Iran, and her declaration doesn’t quite resonate with the local population. Two journalists – a couple publishing under the collective pseudonym...
Quake, by Icelandic Literary Prize-winning author Auður Jónsdóttir (The People in the Basement), is an engrossing, multi-layered mystery in which memories – imagined, erased and recovered – determine the future of a fractured family. Jónsdóttir introduces the protagonist in various scenarios in the novel's opening...
*STARRED REVIEW In addition to Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s standalone Marina (2015), Daniel Weyman previously narrated The Labyrinth of the Spirits, considered the finale to the internationally bestselling Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Weyman – his continuity is especially affecting – returns for Ruiz Zafón’s posthumous collection of...
Greek mythology's princess Cassandra was given the power of prophecy, but when she refused the advances of the god Apollo, she was cursed forever with disbelief. Millennia later, a slight, blond 10-year-old in Cienfuegos, Cuba, insists, "I don't want to be this Raúl, I want...
Photographer/psychologist/author Mikołaj Grynberg is best known in his native Poland for his documentary nonfiction featuring his generation of Polish Jews, born after the Holocaust and raised by survivors. Grynberg turns to fiction for the first time with I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One...
"Objects just seem to collect me, of their own volition," insists Haruki Murakami (First Person Singular): LPs, books, magazine clippings, pencil stubs, and, of course, T-shirts. Murakami T might detour from his global bestsellers, but it's a delightful glimpse into iconic Murakami through his casual...
Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Philippe Girard (Obituary Man) admirably condenses seven decades into a concise 120 pages in Leonard Cohen: On a Wire. It's a valuable introduction to the tumultuous life of the iconic singer/songwriter/poet perhaps best remembered for his classic "Hallelujah," eventually covered by some...
Perumal Murugan and Aniruddhan Vasudevan reunite after the infamous “success” of Murugan’s translated-into-English debut, One Part Woman, longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Murugan declared himself dead on Facebook after the cult novel was viciously condemned in India, his homeland, and...
Nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature before his 1965 death at 79, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (In Black and White, 2018) remains one of Japan’s most important modern writers. These three stories date back a century, yet their universal theme, familial relationships, remains relevantly...
No one knows what happened to the Ark of the Covenant, the legendary vessel holding Moses' engraved Ten Commandments, but "archeologists, mystics, and adventurers still seek for it in vain," explains Eisner-winning comics creator Rutu Modan in an introductory note to her intriguing graphic title...
*STARRED REVIEW Three ancient, traditional Japanese myths get fabulously, subversively transformed in Tokyo-based, Spanish Japanese graphic creator Ken Niimura’s (Henshin, 2014) irresistible latest. “Never Open It” was, once upon a time, “Urashima Tarō,” a “Rip Van Winkle”-like tale about a fisherman who saves a turtle from...
Expanding the insightful delights introduced in global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020), readers are welcomed back to Funiculi Funicula, Tokyo’s time-travel café. The rules haven’t changed, especially the two most urgent: the temporal seeker must wait for the woman-in-white to vacate her seat...
*STARRED REVIEW The works of Yoshiharu Tsuge, credited with the "invention" of literary manga, finally arrived in the U.S. 65 years after he began publishing in Japan in 1955. His 2020 English-language debut, The Man Without Talent, was quickly followed by graphic powerhouse Drawn & Quarterly's...
Cats have long appeared in Japanese fiction, especially popularized in I Am a Cat (1906) by the father of modern Japanese literature, Natsume Sōseki. Joining recent 21st-century mega-successes – The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura, for example – is the...
Japan’s graphic-horror auteur Junji Ito has yet another U.S. edition with a serialized manga originally published as Travelogue of the Succubus, compiled here as Sensor, translated by Jocelyne Allen, who also brought Ito’s Eisner-winning Frankenstein to English-language readers. Mount Sengoku erupted decades ago by the time...
I can’t watch scary movies, but I love graphic horror on the page. And really, fear-mongering via Japanese manga – both series and standalones – promises some of the most affecting fright-fests. As we approach that most haunting time of the year, here’s some chilling company. Death...
The third volume of Naoki Urasawa’s latest superb spectacle begins to distinguish individual story lines while overlapping various subplots. It’s 1964, five years since Japan’s deadliest typhoon. Asa is as righteously spunky as ever, determined to expose what happened the morning after she witnessed what couldn’t...
*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé transforms “the words that were entrusted“ to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with...
Poet, essayist, and fiction writer Fabio Morábito’s latest novel arrives stateside with the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, Mexico’s highest literary honor. Egypt-born, Italy-raised, Mexico-domiciled since 15, Morábito is polyphonic; American poet and professor Curtis Bauer adroitly enables English access here. Literacy, fluency, and interactive engagement with words...
