Betrayal Archives - Page 17 of 47

Five More to Go: Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Japanese, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Repost, Translation

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2009) intends exactly that universality. Initially, small things disappeared...

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste [in Booklist]

08 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Maaza Mengiste’s indelible first novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gate (2010), put Ethiopian historical fiction on countless best-of, must-read, and award lists. Her monumental new novel draws inspiration from her great-grandmother, who as the eldest and in Mulan-style answered Emperor Haile Selassie’s demand for first...

The Sweetest Fruits by Monique Truong [in Booklist]

02 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, European, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

*STARRED REVIEW He began life in 1850 as Patricio to his Greek mother, immigrating at two from the island of Lefcada to the Emerald Isle, his father’s birthplace, where he became Patrick. By 19, he landed in New York, made his way to Cincinnati, and married...

Animal Farm: The Graphic Novel by George Orwell, adapted and illustrated by Odyr [in Booklist]

19 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Love ’em or disdain ’em, but classics turned into full-color graphic adaptations are a growing genre. For reluctant readers, the positives enabled by illustrative enhancement to the original text can often outweigh potential negatives. Brazilian graphic novelist Odyr’s “fully authorized” adaptation (in accordance with The Estate...

Five More to Go: Sok-yong Hwang’s At Dusk [in The Booklist Reader]

17 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

At Dusk by Sok-yong Hwang and translated by Sora Kim-Russell In just over a year, three Sok-yong Hwang titles – Familiar Things (2018), Princess Bari (2019), and this novel – have arrived stateside, each indelibly, adroitly anglophoned by Seoul-based Sora Kim-Russell. Lauded by Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe as “undoubtedly the most powerful voice...

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams [in Booklist]

27 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Candice Carty-Williams and Shvorne Marks are quite the dynamic duo: a debut novelist gets paired with a first-time narrator for spectacular results. Hailed (rather lazily) as the black Bridget Jones, Queenie decidedly deserves center-stage without expedient comparisons. As a Jamaican British 25-year-old Londoner, Queenie’s...

Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage [in Booklist]

24 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Lebanese, Lebanese American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW “Although the characters in this novel are fictitious,” the final sentence of Hage’s (Carnival, 2013) spectacular novel acknowledges, “this is a book of mourning for the many who witnessed senseless wars, and for those who perished in those wars.” For the Lebanon-born, Canadian-domiciled, International...

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder [in Booklist]

12 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest Anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2009) intends exactly that universality. Initially, small things disappeared – “Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp.” What didn’t just...

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim + Author Interview [in Bloom]

21 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

“I’m still getting used to the idea of being a writer”: Q&A with Angie Kim True confession: A few years ago, our mutual friend, the writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee (not a Bloomer – Marie had a first-ever YA fiction multi-book deal with a major publisher in...

Evening in Paradise: More Stories by Lucia Berlin [in Booklist]

19 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2015, A Manual for Cleaning Women collected 43 stories Lucia Berlin left before her 2004 death, making her an overnight – albeit posthumous – literary sensation. Here are 22 more, presented in some semblance of chronological order, mirroring Berlin’s own peripatetic exploits (Texas,...

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault, illustrated by Reneé Nault [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Given the evergreen veneration of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic that, since its 1985 publication, has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, and ballet incarnations and, most recently, the wildly popular television series, this graphic novel was certainly inevitable. Canadian artist Reneé Nault is credited...

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton [Booklist]

12 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt certainly seems to be an ideal choice to narrate a labyrinthine, multigenerational mystery tied to a posh British countryside home, Birchwood Manor. “And I? I had no choice; I stayed behind,” Froggatt crisply assures Birchwood’s only permanent ghostly resident, who ends...

Star by Yukio Mishima, translated by Sam Bett [in Booklist]

09 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Revered writer of dozens of novels, plays, short stories, and essays, Yukio Mishima was an iconic master of the performative existence. A literary sensation by 24 for Confessions of a Mask (1949), a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman about a young homosexual’s hidden identity, fame would be Mishima’s...

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad [in Booklist]

08 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

Born to a Cairo-based merchant father, raised by his paternal grandmother in Nablus, educated in a Constantinople boarding school, Midhat Kamal is already a peripatetic polyglot when he arrives in France. While he studies medicine at the University of Montpellier, he lives with a doctor...

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates [in Booklist]

05 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Prodigious Joyce Carol Oates’ latest novel reads rather like a mash-up of The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, even A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In 2039, in the Reconstituted North American States, 17-year-old Adriane Strohl is “the spiky-haired girl with the big glistening...

The Body Papers by Grace Talusan [in Booklist]

28 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Every day she didn’t tell, Grace Talusan thought she was saving her grandfather’s life. “There was a daytime grandfather and a nighttime grandfather, two different people in the same body.” Talusan was 7 when that nocturnal monster began the sexual assaults, which spanned seven years....

Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

25 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Joining a growing cohort of notable Korean imports, Ha Seong-nan’s dazzling, vaguely intertwined collection of 10 stories is poised for Western acclaim. In “Flowers of Doom,” a loner painstakingly studies his neighbors by sifting through their trash – “Garbage never lies” – eventually deciphering...

All That Is Left Is All That Matters by Mark Slouka [in Booklist]

22 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

James Anderson Foster narrates 13 of 15 stories in Slouka’s newest collection, his second in two decades after his 1998 short-fiction debut, Lost Lake. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, sons and mothers, men and animals figure prominently here. Foster effortlessly embodies these diverse characters,...

Someday [Every Day series] by David Levithan [in School Library Journal]

15 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Constant corporeal manifestations aren't mandatory for certain souls in David Levithan’s Every Day series: waking up in someone else's body is 'normal' for some. A and X are two such wanderers, albeit with diverging agendas: A's a respectful temporary visitor, X a parasitic usurper. Rhiannon...

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani [in School Library Journal]

14 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In Robin Miles’s rich, rhythmic narration, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s (I Do Not Come to You By Chance) latest – written in chapters that are sometimes just a few lines – sounds like verse poetry. The story is hardly soothing, based on interviews with 2014 Boko...

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