Unreliable narrator Archives

Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead [in Booklist]

18 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Fiction, Repost, Translation

The mutable, esoteric art world is again the setting for award-winning Argentinian María Gainza’s latest, deftly translated by British writer-editor Thomas Bunstead, who also English-enabled her award-winning Optic Nerve (2019). Gainza’s narrator warns early on, “Any person reading this ought not to expect names, numbers,...

Quake by Auður Jónsdóttir, translated by Meg Matich [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Icelandic, Repost, Translation

Quake, by Icelandic Literary Prize-winning author Auður Jónsdóttir (The People in the Basement), is an engrossing, multi-layered mystery in which memories – imagined, erased and recovered – determine the future of a fractured family. Jónsdóttir introduces the protagonist in various scenarios in the novel's opening...

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

An unexpected airport encounter – with an inevitable flight delay – reunites two university classmates in Antoine Wilson's disturbing yet intriguing Mouth to Mouth. Reminiscent of the cult classic film My Dinner with Andre, Wilson's tête-à-tête exchange takes place in the plush chairs of a...

The Committed by Việt Thanh Nguyễn [in Booklist]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Vietnamese American

Six years since his first novel, The Sympathizer, won the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize, Việt Thanh Nguyễn is back with the much-anticipated second installment in a planned trilogy. Here, the same unreliable narrator adds another few hundred pages to the already 367-page confession he...

True Story by Kate Reed Petty [in Booklist]

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In a story of “they said, she heard, he believed, she can’t remember,” whom do you trust? Even the title misleads – True Story: A Novel – while the final words confirm little: “But I’m trusting you to see this is true ...

The Last Interview by Eshkol Nevo, translated by Sondra Silverston [in Booklist]

01 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Israeli, Jewish, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Internationally bestselling author Eshkol Nevo and award-winning translator Sondra Silverston are five-for-five in enabling Anglophone readers seamless access to Nevo’s engrossing novels. Reminiscent of the retired judge in his last title, Three Floors Up (2017), who communicated with her dead husband via answering-machine messages,...

Five More to Go: Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader]

10 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Pakistani, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi “That whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,” one character admonishes another in Susan Choi’s fifth (and finest) novel. Returning to the multilayered teacher-student power struggles that were seared into My Education (2013), Trust Exercise immediately puts...

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi [in Booklist]

18 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW “That whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,” one character admonishes another in Susan Choi’s fifth, and finest, novel. Returning to the multi-layered teacher-student power struggles seared into My Education (2013), Choi’s Trust Exercise should immediately put readers on alert: it will appear...

The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong, translated by Chi-Young Kim [in Booklist]

26 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

The opening sentence – “The smell of blood woke me” – gives way to a young man discovering his mother’s freshly murdered corpse. He’s gone off his epilepsy medications again, and has trouble remembering, but he’s determined to figure out what happened. Initially, the whodunit and...

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart [in School Library Journal]

20 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Jule West Williams is "the kind of woman it would be a great mistake to underestimate." Her background might be imagined, but the self-assessment is exact. Her invented 10-year "highly unusual education" – not unlike the epic journeys of white hetero heroes, which she both...

Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell [in Library Journal]

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Samantha Schweblin, who is Buenos Aires-born and now lives in Berlin, makes her English-language novel debut, thanks to McDowell's crisp translation. Worms, migrating souls, unseen toxins, and deformed children punctuate a mysterious dialog between Amanda, a dying woman in an emergency clinic, and David,...

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction

It's on top of all the bestseller lists on both sides of the Pond and far beyond, as well. You've seen it in every bookshop window. It's incessantly compared to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. Dreamworks already claimed it for the big screen last year even before it hit...

Malice [Detective Kaga series] by Keigo Higashino, translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye Alexander

06 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Translation

Just before Kumihiko Hidaka is to move from Tokyo to Vancouver, he's found in his home office ...

We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

30 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

"Once upon a time, there was a family with two daughters, and a mother and father who promised to love them both exactly the same." "She was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. It's important to note that I was also all those...

Liar by Justine Larbalestier

13 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Australian, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers

Micah is a boy. Micah is a girl. Micah is 17, a senior in a progressive New York City private school. Micah's father went to Marseille in search of his unknown black French father and came back with a white French wife. Micah's father is an...

The Boy by Naeem Murr

29 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Lebanese, Lebanese American

Boy.Murr You can't believe how scary this book can be, especially if you have children of your own. The eponymous boy of many names in Naeem Murr's disturbingly effective debut novel is a complicated, unpredictable,...

A Case of Exploding Mangoes: A Novel by Mohammed Hanif [in Bloomsbury Review]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Pakistani, Repost, South Asian

case-of-exploding-mangoes1 Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s sudden death in a mysterious 1988 plane crash remains unsolved. Hanif, once part of the Pakistani air force and now a British expat, cleverly presents a riotous fictional version of how...

A Carnivore’s Inquiry by Sabina Murray + Author Interview [in AsianWeek]

16 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

A Carnivore's Inquiry Sabina Murray’s PEN/Faulkner Follow-Up: ‘A Carnivore’s Inquiry’ With last year’s prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for her stunning short story collection, The Caprices, in hand, Sabina Murray is looking at her career through new eyes:...

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