Just as he was in Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Arthur Less is apparently still a “bad gay.” But that doesn’t mean he’s not delightfully lost in this highly anticipated second volume of Greer’s “Less” series. This time, Arthur is haphazardly traveling across the...
Woven of the World is a splendid mosaic of a picture book, lyrically written by Katey Howes (Rissy No Kissies) and lushly illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova (Russian Tales). "I listen, as I'm weaving, / to the rhythm of the loom," Howes writes. "I imagine skeins of...
*STARRED REVIEW Sarayu (just Sara at her English university) has a scholarship so tight that she dreams of telling her benefactor how “an extra hundred pounds would make not the tiniest difference to his life but would transform [hers].” She finds comfort – not to mention...
Once upon a time, they seemed to be an ideal family: parents Hank and Karen Liu Brighton; their biracial daughters Morgan and Riley. They owned a small organic grocery store in Eugene, Oregon, then expanded into a globally sourced luxury goods empire called Kaleidoscope. First, Morgan...
Indie publisher Tuttle showcases Filipino creator Arnold Arre, whose The Mythology Class (another Tuttle title) was the first comic to win the Philippine National Book Award. Renowned for his fantasy works, Arre describes Halina Filipina as a “no-frills relationship story” in an afterword describing the...
*STARRED REVIEW Eduardo Halfon (Mourning; Monastery) has published a dozen books in Spanish; four are currently available in English translations. Seeming to challenge his substantial output, Halfon explained in a 2015 comment to Shelf Awareness, "I'm only writing one book, and everything I publish along the way is just...
*STARRED REVIEW Winter in Sokcho, the extraordinary first novel, gorgeously translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, by French Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin, won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The two reunite for The Pachinko Parlor, in which Dusapin's remarkably intricate and lean prose reveals...
Naz Kutub commingles the preposterous and poignant, heightened with myths of lost love. Shawn K. Jain is a sensitive cipher, opening with Kutub’s author’s note that includes content warnings about abuse and expulsion, both of which happen to Sy, the 17-year-old Muslim Indian gay son...
*STARRED REVIEW Thai American and double Newbery Honoree Christina Soontornvat gets culturally and linguistically matched with Thai-fluent, (self-described) “blended” Asian American (of Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese heritage) Sura Siu for engrossing high-seas exploits in search of mythical lands. For 12-year-old Sai, being Master Mapmaker Paiyoon’s assistant means...
*STARRED REVIEW Amit Chaudhuri – novelist, poet, essayist, musician – dexterously expands the quotidian into philosophical, sociopolitical, and existential ruminations in Sojourn, a sparse narrative with undeniably dense resonance. An unnamed Indian writer arrives in Berlin for a four-month university residency. He's befriended, then abandoned, by a...
Yiyun Li’s fiction since her son’s tragic suicide seems to have catapulted her away from the Asian roots that define her earlier award-winning fiction. Her latest begins on a pastoral farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Agnès, known as the “French bride,” lives with her husband...
Few books deserve the "perfect" designation, but The Flamingo by Guojing arguably earns that appellation. The celebrated author of The Only Child and Stormy presents another remarkable, near-wordless story for young readers that gloriously commemorates bonds between humans and animals, enhanced here with the heartwarming relationship between a child and...
Paris-based journalist Dana Thomas adapts her 2019 erudite exposé for younger audiences, and also (again) narrates. For a writer careful enough to include phonetic guidelines – ”Maria Cornejo (pronounced “Cor-nay-ho”),” for example – her inconsistencies surprise: Ikeda is not “ai-kee-dah”; “Iris (pronounced “EEE-reece”)” is followed...
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...
Terry Hong, Booklist Contributing Reviewer and chair of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence selection committee, had questions for Tom Lin, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for his first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. Here is their conversation: So as a debut novelist in your...
Liza Ferneyhough makes her delightfully clever author/illustrator debut with Nana, Nenek & Nina. The picture book opens with a double-page spread introducing a three-person family, with the Golden Gate Bridge visible through their window. Photos hang on either side of the window, two of which...
Three boys – Youssef, Iseul, Dayo – are born in Saudi Arabia in 1990. Their distant fathers – from Pakistan, Korea, Nigeria – are Muslim students at the University of Markab, where they meet Salim, who will become the boys’ adoptive father. Salim flees Saudi...
More than a foot tall and nine inches wide, the exquisite The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky, by Korean author/illustrator Kim Jihyun, makes a magnificent first impression. The pages within showcase spectacular illustrations and, without a single word, gorgeously reveal a...
*STARRED REVIEW The monsters here are, of course, people, made terrifying by what Michelle de Kretser labels “three scary monsters – racism, misogyny, and ageism.” Subtitled “A Novel in Two Parts,” the notable Sri Lankan-born Australian de Kretser’s (The Life to Come, 2018) latest is indeed...
Artist Emma Fick’s illustrated travelogue combines intricate art and intimate observations – vibrantly colored and distinctly hand-lettered – of a Beijing-to-Moscow expedition on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In May 2015, while in Finland with her then-boyfriend-now-husband, the pair found a used book, Trans-Siberian Handbook, that had...
