Shelf Awareness Archives - Page 12 of 19

The Aunt Who Wouldn’t Die by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, translated by Arunava Sinha [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

As spare as it might initially seem, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay's wickedly entertaining novel, The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die, manages smoothly to illuminate gender inequity, cultural biases, socioeconomic disparity, and familial dysfunction through a three-generational ghost story. At 18, Somlata is wed to her 32-year-old husband, the "blissfully...

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

Returning to the Palestinian multi-generational epic format that made her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin (2010), an international bestseller, Susan Abulhawa's haunting Against the Loveless World features another extended Palestinian clan enduring exile, surviving persecution, and (sometimes) cheating death. Abulhawa's compelling cipher is a woman with...

Brother’s Keeper by Julie Lee [in Shelf Awareness]

27 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers

For debut author Julie Lee, the Korean War is deeply personal: her mother was 15 and living in North Korea when the war commenced on June 25, 1950. Drawing on her mother's memories of her north-to-south escape and relocation, Lee's Brother's Keeper is a compelling #OwnVoices...

The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

24 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

An English-language debut, The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud is a label-defying collection of Kuniko Tsurita's gekiga – literally, "dramatic pictures," referring to more serious graphic work for adult audiences. Organized chronologically from 1966 to 1980, the historical compilation includes Tsurita's early magazine submissions as a...

Hot Pot Night! by Vincent Chen [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

"What's for dinner?" is an end-of-day call to action in homes everywhere. Debut author/illustrator Vincent Chen answers with Hot Pot Night!, a toothsome treat that gathers family, friends, and neighbors for what will be an evening of delectable communal dining. As the residents of an apartment...

Author Interview: Kelli Jo Ford [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Dreaming the Impossible Even before Kelli Jo Ford's debut, Crooked Hallelujah was released, it garnered accolades: the seventh chapter, "Hybrid Vigor," won the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize in 2019, and Ford's pre-publication manuscript won the 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award from the University of Central Oklahoma. Ford is...

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost

Pieces of Asako Serizawa's intriguing novel-in-interlinked-stories, Inheritors, have been published since 2005 and winning awards (O. Henry, Pushcart) since 2013. Her acknowledgements reveal "this book [took] so long to write," but her tenacity is a gift to readers. With 13 stories featuring five generations of...

The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

Pristine beaches, spectacular landscapes, cultural landmarks might have been the go-to tourist destinations once upon a time, but in Yun Ko-eun's sly, compelling novel, The Disaster Tourist, scenes of death and destruction are where the people really want to go. Global voyeurism is succeeding, with...

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

Mexican Canadian Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an award-winning, genre-hopping literary chameleon, having successfully written fantasy, fairy tales, vampiric adventure, noir, short stories. Clearly channeling her inner H.P. Lovecraft in Mexican Gothic, she's created her own varietal of irresistible 1950s fungal horror. Socialite Noemí is summoned home early...

Afterland by Lauren Beukes [in Shelf Awareness]

02 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, South African

"You can't imagine how much the world can change in six months." Oh, but yes we can! With remarkable prescience, Lauren Beukes’ Afterland takes on an "unprecedented global pandemic" with chilling results – and surprising comic relief threaded throughout. Six years after the success of Broken...

Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For Meredith Talusan, transformation looks like this: "Sun Child," "Harvard Man," "Lady Wedgwood." In the nimbly titled Fairest, award-winning journalist Talusan shares an unflinching exploration of identity. "Mirrors were not just mirrors to me," she writes in her prologue, "but bridges made of light to fantastic...

Author Interview: Traci Chee [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

The Magic of Reality Traci Chee is the author of The Reader Trilogy and the novel We Are Not Free, coming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on September 1. She studied literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz and earned a Master of Arts degree from San Francisco...

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In a mesmerizing genre-switch, YA author Traci Chee moves from the fantasy worldbuilding of her acclaimed The Reader trilogy (The Reader; The Speaker; The Storyteller) to World War II historical fiction, with unforgettable results, in We Are Not Free. As a fourth-generation Japanese American, Chee gets personal, affectingly...

I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Helmed by director Nahnatchka Khan (Netflix's Always Be My Maybe), an HBO Max adaptation of Lyla Lee’s I'll Be the One was announced six months prior to the book's publication date. Before Hollywood hijacks your imagination, though, get to know Skye off-screen in this delectable...

Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Kelli Jo Ford makes a magnificent #OwnVoices debut with Crooked Hallelujah. The book already has significant plaudits: the seventh chapter, "Hybrid Vigor," won the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize in 2019, and her pre-publication manuscript won the 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award from the University of...

The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem by Sandra Tsing Loh [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite the "golden years" promised by many, for writer, performer, and University of California, Irvine, professor Sandra Tsing Loh, her "fifty-fifth year was more like living a disorganized twenty-five-year-old's life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old's body." With the same self-deprecating wit and sardonic charm with...

The Swamp by Yoshiharu Tsuge, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Yoshiharu Tsuge abandoned making manga in 1987, and yet his legacy has only expanded – deservedly so – during the decades since, far beyond his native Japan. Considered one of the originators of the graphic 'I-novel' (shishōsetsu), he eventually "abandoned what had been considered one...

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

If anyone can deeply understand a foreign text, the translator surely tops the list. "Like Bae's others, this book is simultaneously a detective novel and a surreal, poetic fever dream," explains Man Booker International Prize-winning translator Deborah Smith. Provocatively demanding, Untold Night and Day is Smith's...

Outside the Lines by Ameera Patel [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Repost, South African

"We know what you did," an ominous warning, proves pivotal in Ameera Patel's electrifying debut novel, Outside the Lines. In a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa, the threatening phrase inextricably links five disparate characters. "You took the money from the vase," the drug-addicted,...

Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu [in Shelf Awareness]

28 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

What starts as seemingly light reading featuring New York family and friends headed to an Indian wedding morphs into a spectacularly entertaining examination of race, privilege, hybrid identity, family dysfunction, and maybe even a love story or five. Living in Mumbai and New York City,...

BookDragon Shelf Awareness Tag