In Diana Abu-Jaber's absorbing novel Fencing with the King, 31-year-old Amani is in "free-fall," her marriage over, her writing (which once garnered her a "big literary prize") stalled, and her teaching career threatened. She's even returned to living with her parents in Syracuse. Amani's Uncle Hafez invites...
Polyglot Yoko Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, introduced an ursine character named Knut in Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016) and opens her newest import with a same-named protagonist. Whether or not the two are related seems unlikely, yet in Tawada’s fascinating tale,...
*STARRED REVIEW Margaret Chiu Greanias's inviting Amah Faraway is a heartfelt homage to her Taiwanese heritage that binds multiple generations on either side of the globe. Tracy Subisak (illustrator of Shawn Loves Sharks) elevates the familiar bicultural narrative with vivacious multimedia illustrations. Kylie of San Francisco and Amah of...
As the photographer for the extended Chan clan’s wedding business, Meddelin (a well-intentioned approximation of Madeleine) is intimately familiar with all manner of nuptial celebrations, even when they include accidental murder, as witnessed in Dial A for Aunties (2021), Jesse Q. Sutanto’s rollicking debut, which introduced Big...
Since Hara Wilson and Choi Yujun didn't quite get their happily-ever-after in Heart & Seoul, author Jen Frederick – a transracial Korean adoptee – returns with its addictive sequel, Seoulmates. In the first book, Korea-born, Iowa-raised adoptee Hara's loss of her estranged father prompted a...
"Objects just seem to collect me, of their own volition," insists Haruki Murakami (First Person Singular): LPs, books, magazine clippings, pencil stubs, and, of course, T-shirts. Murakami T might detour from his global bestsellers, but it's a delightful glimpse into iconic Murakami through his casual...
Few titles need official CIA permission to be published, but Sophia Glock's perceptive graphic novel memoir, Passport, had to go through the "daunting and complicated task" of obtaining the CIA's Publication Review Board approval. Glock's parents were "intelligence officers," an admission they disclosed when they...
*STARRED REVIEW The works of Yoshiharu Tsuge, credited with the "invention" of literary manga, finally arrived in the U.S. 65 years after he began publishing in Japan in 1955. His 2020 English-language debut, The Man Without Talent, was quickly followed by graphic powerhouse Drawn & Quarterly's...
*STARRED REVIEW Harmony Becker, who brilliantly created the artwork for George Takei’s Eisner-winning They Called Us Enemy (2019), makes her stupendous solo debut in what will prove to one of the best graphic titles of the year. The narrative might initially seem simple: a mixed-race U.S. teen...
To compress Mesha Maren's exhilarating second novel, Perpetual West, into a quick description would be an injustice to her intricately plotted, unsettling narrative about two 21-year-olds unsure of who they really are. Whereas her debut, Sugar Run, had its characters return to Maren's home landscape of rural...
Kei Miller: Many Different Writers Kei Miller commands genres – poetry, fiction, essays – as adroitly as he navigates identities as a Jamaican native son, a British academic, a global award-winning writer, and, most recently, a Miami professor. As poet, he's been shortlisted for the Costa...
Literary chameleon Kei Miller (The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion) has produced award-winning short stories, novels, poetry, and essays. Things I Have Withheld is arguably his most stupendous title to date. These 14 exquisitely vulnerable essays explore his Jamaican heritage, his British...
“If I could put it into words, I wouldn’t be drawing it,” the cartoonist insists. In mostly black-and-white panels laden with exquisite details, Zuo Ma intertwines autobiography with fantasy, their relationship revealed some 200 pages into the unpredictable narrative. A young man returns home from city...
*STARRED REVIEW The Seoul subway system's line #2 is a circular route that's also the city's busiest; it happens to include Gangnam – as in "Gangnam Style" – among its dozens of popular stations. Author/illustrator Kim Hyo-eun's magnificent I Am the Subway highlights a train traveling...
Once upon a time, two Bosnian girls arrived at kindergarten with paper-doll selfies. Sara’s mother made hers, garbed in pink and glittery. Lejla’s was blank. “[I]t’s not like I wear the same clothes every day,” she insisted, as if already aware that future incarnations –...
*STARRED REVIEW That the protagonist's name is Francisco Goldberg – an amalgam of maternal Guatemalan immigrant and paternal Jewish parentage – presents an irresistible invitation to explore autobiographical overlaps with award-winning creator Francisco Goldman. The parallels are immediate: both are peripatetic journalist/writers with connections to Boston,...
Warning: the number of corpses could actually exceed the page count in Tom Lin's addictively gruesome debut, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. Set between the Utah Territories and California in the late 1800s, Lin's novel manages to enhance a wild, wild western with Odyssean devotion, magic...
Here’s where veteran narrator Lisa Flanagan excels: unflaggingly individualizing myriad varied characters. Here’s where she disappoints: stumbling over non-English words and using a grating French accent. Quibbles aside, Flanagan consistently, remarkably maintains distinct voices for the peripatetic Preston family in Liese O'Halloran Schwarz’s (The Possible...
“I wake up late the morning I’m meant to go to the consulate,” Teju Cole’s spare novel opens. As if in mid-confession, Peter Jay Fernandez’s tone is immediately familiar. In mere seconds, he’s drawing audiences into his confidence, sharing experiences, disclosing comments, and divulging secrets...
Rolando’s been fired from a marketing gig he hates, which was actually an act of corporate kindness, because he gets severance pay, allowing him to be a screen hermit in his man cave. When his roommates finally drag him out, he ends up abandoning them...
