Betrayal Archives - Page 13 of 47

Bluebeard’s First Wife: Stories by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

21 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Bestselling Korean author Ha Seong-nan and award-winning Canadian translator Janet Hong are two-for-two at spectacular pairing, repeating the successful partnership of Ha’s collection, Flowers of Mold (2019), with another sensational, 11-story collaboration. The titular “Bluebeard’s First Wife” features a 31-year-old woman who marries a...

The House of Deep Water by Jeni McFarland [in Shelf Awareness]

19 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

For Jeni McFarland, who survived childhood sexual assault, talking about her trauma "was like a dam burst," she reveals in an interview with her publisher. "It was so cathartic writing about it that I couldn't stop." That horrific survival, further aggravated by being one of...

The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated by Frank Wynne [in Booklist]

18 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Fiction, Mexican, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The family is Cuban. The son, 18, is fulfilling his military conscription, enduring mind-numbing sentry duty any way he can until his release. The mother, once a schoolteacher, is housebound with a violently debilitating illness. The father, who manages a four-star tourist hotel, is...

Five More to Go: Kim Hyun Sook’s Banned Book Club [in The Booklist Reader]

15 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian, Cuban, Cuban American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Korean, Latin American, Lists, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook with Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju Busan-based wife-and-husband team Kim and Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous...

Echo on the Bay by Masatsugu Ono, translated by Angus Turvill [in Booklist]

13 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Masatsugu Ono’s second novel, originally published in his native Japan as Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune (Boat on a Choppy Bay), won the prestigious Mishima Yukio Prize, and now arrives Anglophoned by award-winning Angus Turvill, who also translated Ono’s Lion’s Tread Point (2018). Ono, too, is...

People of the City by Cyprian Ekwensi [in Shelf Awareness]

07 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Repost

Although Chinua Achebe's pivotal Things Fall Apart is a staple on most Western students' reading lists as representative of modern African literature, Cyprian Ekwensi predates Achebe by four years as one of Nigeria's first writers publishing in English. Introduced in the U.K. in 1954, Ekwensi's debut...

The Silence of Bones by June Hur [in Shelf Awareness]

05 May, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

June Hur's gripping debut re-creates the Joseon Dynasty, when Korea relied on brutality to contain the spread of foreign Catholicism. During this bloody time, 16-year-old Seol's irrepressible curiosity is about to become her best asset for solving crime ...

The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Ali Araghi begins his prodigious debut novel with a literal bang: once upon a time in an apple orchard, a returning soldier urges his rifle into his son's hands, forcing the boy to shoot him. The shocking tragedy renders 10-year-old Ahmad mute, and has...

Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som [in Booklist]

27 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW A woman goes out for her regular evening walk on the beach, contemplating her relationship with her husband, until she sees a mermaid washed up on the shore. And here text and graphics suddenly diverge: the words reveal a recent affair, while the frames...

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabelle Allende, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson [in Booklist]

25 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW How fitting that what might be Isabel Allende’s best work gets aurally elevated by one of audio’s most gifted narrators. For nearly 10 hours, Edoardo Ballerini embodies the extended Dalmau family, flowing through six decades, multiple countries, two continents, recounting the Spanish Civil War...

A Burning by Megha Majumdar [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW For the first time in her young life, Jivan has her own cellphone, which she bought with money earned by working as a shopgirl, having left high school after barely passing her tenth-form exams. After witnessing a gruesome train-station attack during her 15-minute walk...

Members Only by Sameer Pandya [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Uncategorized

Members Only, the first novel by Sameer Pandya (author of the story collection The Blind Writer), is as provocative as it is comedic. In a horribly misguided attempt to bond with the first people of color since his own admission into a suburban Los Angeles tennis...

Five More to Go: Cho Nam-Joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 [in The Booklist Reader]

17 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, Canadian, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Japanese, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo and translated by Jamie Chang Cho’s narrative is part bildungsroman and part Wikipedia entry. She opens with “August, 2015,” immediately divulging the fragile mental state of her titular Kim Jiyoung, who now as a wife and mother has...

We Had No Rules by Corinne Manning [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Corinne Manning’s author statement couldn’t be clearer. “I had no idea how to write authentically until the day when I typed the sentence ‘Oh, f*ck it. I’m writing lesbian fiction.’” That declaration became “Gay Tale,” one of 11 stories in this collection, her first,...

Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan [in Booklist]

13 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Repost

After a decade together, Oscar and Mina married, but on their wedding night, Mina downed all the pills she could find, yet somehow lived. Six months later, she’s walking across George Washington Bridge. She’s already sent one of her purple flip-flops into the dark below...

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez [in Booklist]

09 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Earth’s destruction, space inhabitation, time travel – none of that is unfamiliar. Rampant capitalism, workaholic isolation, and family bonds too can be pedestrian themes. Yet Simon Jimenez’s debut, which includes all of the above, is a remarkably fresh, electrifying story that, at its core,...

Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima, translated by Stephen Dodd [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Two years after the original 1968 publication in Japan of Life for Sale, which opens immediately with a young man's failed attempt to die, Yukio Mishima (Star) led an unsuccessful military coup d'etat that ended with his highly publicized, gruesomely violent ritual suicide. Just 45...

Then the Fish Swallowed Him by Amir Ahmadi Arian [in Shelf Awareness}

07 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Prolifically published in his native Farsi, Amir Ahmadi Arian makes his English-language debut with Then the Fish Swallowed Him, a disturbingly irresistible novel exposing the invalidity of truth and lies under a despotic regime. Growing up in a volatile, politically fractured society and losing both parents...

Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah, translated by Geoffrey Strachan [in Booklist]

06 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Nathacha Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution of a boy, Moïse, and all the people...

Dominicana by Angie Cruz [in Booklist]

02 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Caribbean American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

“The invisibility of the women, in particular of my community, fueled this desire to write the Dominican experience, the Latinx experience, the immigrant experience, the New York experience,” reveals Angie Cruz in an interview accessible only if you choose audio. Making her narrator debut, fellow...

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