Lan Samantha Chang is a literary success of countless accolades, from her Ivy pedigrees (Yale, Harvard) to coveted fellowships (Guggenheim, Stanford's Stegner, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) to her directorship since 2006 of what many believe is the country's (the world's?) top creative writing program,...
Although I can't recommend this book, I sure would like to find some readers who might want to discuss it. As it's apparently a "national bestseller" – so touts the cover of the paperback edition – perhaps a few of you who have already read it might...
Cath and Wren are twins – how they got their name is just too entertainingly clever. They've been each other's best friend their whole lives, sharing the same room which also serves as a near-shrine to Simon Snow (à la Harry Potter, who does get a...
Mysteries don't get any more substantially delicious than this: Vish Puri voiced by Sam Dastor as written by Tarquin Hall, with just the right balance of page-turning entertainment and sociopolitical insight. Before you partake, however, you should know that this is #4 in a series;...
After 10 installments of her award-winning Rei Shimura mysteries, DC-area-based Sujata Massey goes historical with her latest Dictionary, published this summer after six years in the making. Dictionary marks the debut of a new series Massey intends, The Daughters of Bengal, each set in India. Given a choice...
Since we're talking four volumes here, allow me attempt to offer a set-up without too many spoilers. "One thousand years ago," a boy named Teito Klein (not sure of the kanji for 'Teito,' but his last name means "small" auf Deutsch – you'll find many German-inspired references throughout)...
* STARRED REVIEW Recipient of the James Joyce, Prix Courrier International, and Premio Grinzane Cavour awards for novels such as To Live (adapted to film by director Zhang Yimou) and Brothers, shortlisted for the 2008 Man Asian Prize, Yu Hua is an international sensation. His latest...
So here's the last of my recent unintentional assemblage of end-of-World-War-II novels that began with Elizabeth Wein’s wrenching Rose Under Fire, and progressed with Chris Bohjalian's desperate Skeletons at the Feast and continued with his latest, the vengeful The Light in the Ruins. Of this week's quartet, Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins (how about that...
This, Chris Bohjalian's latest, is one to stick in the ears ...
Tell me if you've heard this one before: a Cuban, an El Salvadorean, and an Iranian land on the page and spend decades trying to find their place in the world. Yes? Then, you must have read Cristina García’s A Handbook to Luck. No? Then read...
Earlier this year, I received an email from a Chinese Canadian author, May Q. Wong, inquiring about "a shipload of Koreans who sailed to Mexico to find a better life." Clueless, I forwarded her request to a few of my scholar friends and colleagues ...
In 2006, Gene Luen Yang made major literary headlines when his then-debut, American Born Chinese, became (not without controversy, ahem!) the first-ever graphic novel nominated for a National Book Award. [Click here for my 2007 post-NBA interview with Yang.] Released earlier this month, Yang's two-volume Boxers &...
Meet Liliko, a supermodel of such perfect proportions as can only be ...
For you DC-area-locals who were wondering, debut novelist A.X. Ahmad is one of us ...
A Japanese writer, also named Minae Mizumura, recalls her privileged expatriate New York childhood, then witnesses her family devolve in adulthood. A Tokyo-based editor takes a countryside vacation and meets an older woman who shares fantastical memories of some of the inhabitants. A village girl...
The top of this debut volume proclaims, auf Deutsch, "Poesie des Widerstandes," or 'Poetry of the Resistors.' Poetry is certainly visible in the alpine landscapes and the swirling energy of the constant movement; most pronounced, however, is the tragedy of what happens across the panels...
Emma is hardly the typical Canadian teenager. At 16, she's lived all over the world, thanks to her career diplomat mother, who Emma currently blames for all the latest terrible events in her life: she's in yet another new country – this time Pakistan with some...
When I recently caught up with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, she was in one of her rare lull periods at home in Houston, Texas, having finished almost three solid months of book touring for her latest novel, Oleander Girl. Like her latest protagonist, Korobi Roy, a...
In order to fully enjoy this manga, you first need to read its prequel, Princess Knight (in two volumes in English translation). Come back when you're finished ...
Best known for her penultimate novel – the bestselling 2006 Booker longlisted The Emperor's Children – Claire Messud takes on about-to-be-middle-aged regret with a raw vengeance in this, her fifth and latest title. That her protagonist Nora Eldridge shares the same first name as the discontented heroine in Henrik Ibsen's A...
