Suicide Archives - BookDragon

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell [in Booklist]

15 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chilean, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW An outstanding trio delivers another fabulous performance. This is international-prize-winning Chilean poet/writer Alejandro Zambra’s 2006 debut novel, English-enabled by lauded Megan McDowell and distinctly embodied by actor Gisela Chípe (who also narrated Zambra’s 2022 novel, Chilean Poet). With a mere 1:16 runtime, a single listen...

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana [in Booklist]

12 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Sidik Fofana’s exquisite debut is further enhanced by eight pitch-perfect narrators (but where’s the cast list?!) who embody the collection’s eight interconnected stories. “Banneker Terrace on 129th and Fred Doug ain’t pretty,” but evictions are pending because the building has been sold to create “deluxe...

Black Paradox by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Four strangers – Taburo, Pii-tan, Baracchi, Maruso – gather for the first time and embark on their “journey to paradise”: “We met on the suicide site Black Paradox, and now we’re each other’s final companions.” The quartet’s reasons for seeking death suggest strange parallels: “So the...

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The cover boasts a recommendation from global phenom BTS’s leader RM. The PR materials tout its “runaway best-seller” status in its native South Korea, where mental illness remains stigmatized in a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates. As a twentysomething social media director...

Ghost Town by Kevin Chen, translated by Darryl Sterk [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Translation

Former actor turned award-winning writer Kevin Chen's Ghost Town is certainly cinematic, populated with unforgettable characters – living, dead, and in between. Welcome to Yongjing, "a rural backwater in central Taiwan," just as Ghost Month looms. The Chen clan is about to experience an unexpected reunion,...

The Missing Word by Concita De Gregorio, translated by Clarissa Botsford

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

Widower, widow. Uxoricide. Orphan. Patricide. Infanticide. And yet missing from that harrowing vocabulary is a word for “parents who lose children. Who don’t murder them, but lose them.” Irina becomes that kind of grieving parent when her 6-year-old daughters vanish. She’s recently separated from husband Mathias,...

The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola [in Booklist]

01 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

JJ Bola opens with a shocking promise: “I quit my job; I am taking my life savings, $9,021, and when it runs out, I am going to kill myself.” Nigerian British actor Oseloka Obi commands immediate attention in his debut narration in a solo adult...

Hummingbird Heart by Travis Dandro [in Booklist]

27 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Travis Dandro made his graphic title debut with award-winning King of King Court (2019), about his complicated 1980s youth. In this follow-up, he’s a Camaro-driving teenager in 1991 in his final year at home before art school. His heroin-addicted birth father has committed suicide and his...

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk [in Booklist]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Actor Hannah Cabell’s stage training clearly gives her a stupendous boost in the recording studio; with a mere dozen credits, she’s already superb – and proves herself an ideal audio enabler for Toronto librarian Eva Jurczyk’s novel debut. Liesl Weiss’ boss, Christopher, is lying...

When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley [in Shelf Awareness]

02 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Repost

Soon Wiley's searing debut, When We Fell Apart, deftly reveals in alternating chapters an abruptly truncated love story. Min Ford, a biracial Korean American, is a Samsung cultural specialist who has lived for three years in Seoul. Kim Yu-jin is in her final year at...

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter [in Booklist]

11 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

Exceptional narrator Dominic Hoffman adroitly assumes the internationally mega-bestselling, 2020 Prix Goncourt-winning, Anglophoned latest from prodigious French author Hervé Le Tellier. Hoffman begins as professional assassin Blake, then becomes frustrated author Victor, film editor Lucie, and David, who is about to be diagnosed with terminal...

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu [in Booklist]

17 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Lauded Vancouver-born, Seattle-domiciled poet-novelist Kim Fu (The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, 2018) presents a dozen sly, provocative, fabulous short stories sure to delight and shock. From doll parts to winged ankles to stockpiled gold bars, Fu flaunts an inimitable imagination. She deftly parses...

I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To: Stories by Mikołaj Grynberg, translated by Sean Gasper Bye [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Jewish, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

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...

Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

In 2007, the New Yorker published "Sweetheart Sorrow," which became the first chapter of David Hoon Kim's enigmatic debut, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost. The duration of the novel's opening 30ish pages is the only time Fumiko – a Japanese student in Paris who...

Colorful by Eto Mori, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Young Adult Readers

“I want to write a novel that will allow young people who are tired of living to have a break from their own lives.” This is the starting point for Eto Mori’s tale, first published in Japan in 1998 and now a classic. Issues challenging...

Anxious People by Frederik Backman, translated by Neil Smith [in Library Journal]

09 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Swedish, Translation, Uncategorized

*STARRED REVIEW Marin Ireland has a mere couple dozen audio credits – the majority of them in the last few years – yet she’s undoubtedly one of the industry’s most versatile, consistently stupendous narrators. Returning for her third Fredrick Backman pairing, Ireland superbly brings to life...

The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro [in Booklist]

08 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Indian, Indian American, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

International headlines about the 2012 Delhi rape victim exposed the Indian megacity as “the rape capital of the world,” spurring award-winning journalist Sonia Faleiro (Beautiful Thing, 2012) to “find out, and to gather my findings in a book-length study of rape in India.” She finds...

The Parakeet by Espé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

28 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Penn State University Press, already a publisher of award-winning graphic titles, launches a new imprint, Graphic Mundi, showcasing comics intent on “drawing our worlds together.” Among its inaugural line-up is French comics artist Espé’s spectacular, autobiographically inspired homage to a childhood haunted by mental...

Saving Ruby King by Catherine Adel West [in Booklist]

16 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A dead woman opens Catherine Adel West’s startling, haunting debut. Two fathers, two daughters, and the building that is Chicago’s Calvary Hope Christian Church will unravel her unfortunate murder, revealing generations of secrets and violence that culminate in young Ruby King cradling her mother...

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Always approachable, immediately engaged, Hillary Huber returns as Sigrid Nunez’s cipher after voicing her 2018 National Book Awarded, The Friend. Once more, suicide looms, this time as a future intention rather than in response to a foregone event. In this is spare, sharp, simultaneously both daunting...

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