War Archives - Page 4 of 33

Five More to Go: Nathacha Appanah’s Tropic of Violence [in The Booklist Reader]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Chinese, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Indian, Lists, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution...

Five More to Go: Kim Hyun Sook’s Banned Book Club [in The Booklist Reader]

15 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian, Cuban, Cuban American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Korean, Latin American, Lists, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook with Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju Busan-based wife-and-husband team Kim and Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous...

Echo on the Bay by Masatsugu Ono, translated by Angus Turvill [in Booklist]

13 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Masatsugu Ono’s second novel, originally published in his native Japan as Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune (Boat on a Choppy Bay), won the prestigious Mishima Yukio Prize, and now arrives Anglophoned by award-winning Angus Turvill, who also translated Ono’s Lion’s Tread Point (2018). Ono, too, is...

The Library of Legends by Janie Chang [in Booklist]

06 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

They dubbed themselves the Minghua 123: 114 students and nine professors (plus 16 uncounted servants-laborers). In 1937, to escape the Japanese onslaught, they flee their university in Nanking to seek refuge a thousand miles westward. Saving their lives includes safeguarding 147 volumes of the Library...

The Silence of Bones by June Hur [in Shelf Awareness]

05 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

June Hur's gripping debut re-creates the Joseon Dynasty, when Korea relied on brutality to contain the spread of foreign Catholicism. During this bloody time, 16-year-old Seol's irrepressible curiosity is about to become her best asset for solving crime ...

Glorious Boy by Aimee Liu [in Library Journal]

04 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Liu’s eponymous “glorious boy” exists at the intersection of families, communities, countries, cultures – and, for a while, life and death. His spirited, adventurous parents – Shep, a British doctor obsessed with the healing power of indigenous plants, and the American Claire, a would-be...

The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Ali Araghi begins his prodigious debut novel with a literal bang: once upon a time in an apple orchard, a returning soldier urges his rifle into his son's hands, forcing the boy to shoot him. The shocking tragedy renders 10-year-old Ahmad mute, and has...

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabelle Allende, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson [in Booklist]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW How fitting that what might be Isabel Allende’s best work gets aurally elevated by one of audio’s most gifted narrators. For nearly 10 hours, Edoardo Ballerini embodies the extended Dalmau family, flowing through six decades, multiple countries, two continents, recounting the Spanish Civil War...

The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai + Author Interview [in The Booklist Reader]

01 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Vietnamese

Filling a Lack of Voices from Inside Việt Nam: Talking with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai Thousands of Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s devoted readers should have been meeting her live over these next few weeks to hear about The Mountains Sing, her first novel in English. But an unprecedented...

Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna, translated by Helge Dascher [in Booklist]

26 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The U.S.’s April, 1975, withdrawal from Vietnam enabled the so-called Vietnam War to spread into Laos and Cambodia, where Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime stormed Phnom Penh and dispersed its inhabitants – mostly to brutal labor camps – eliminating 1.7 to 2 million Cambodians....

We Unleash the Merciless Storm by Tehlor Kay Mejia [in Booklist]

24 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Finishing what she so affectingly began, Kyla García returns to conclude Tehlor Kay Mejia’s high-octane duology in which the privileged world of Medio and the rebellious encampments of La Voz implode, with the inevitable showdown of Medio’s heir-apparent Mateo Garcia and his two wives –...

This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II by Andrew Fukuda [in School Library Journal]

20 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in European, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In 1935, two unlikely tweens are connected across the Atlantic as assigned – albeit initially unwilling – pen pals. Made to write a full page to Charlie after dismissing her because she's a girl, Alex soon succumbs to her epistolary charms; their letters continue for...

Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia + Author Interview [in Bloom]

10 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese, Chinese American, Nonfiction, Repost

“We have to learn from history and stop repeating its mistakes” As the child of two Chinese refugees, Helen Zia can personally speak to the effects of displacement, separation, adaptation, and reinvention. In her memorable career as activist/journalist/writer/Asian American icon, Zia turns inward for the first time in...

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby [in Booklist]

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

Laura Ruby’s (Bone Gap, 2015) narrator – her name eventually revealed as Pearl – is dead. Pearl’s primary object of attention is not: Frankie, who’s 14 in 1941, is a “half orphan” relegated to a Chicago orphanage with her siblings by their living Italian immigrant father,...

The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai [in Booklist]

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

A granddaughter and her grandmother take turns narrating: “If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.” What emerges is the ominous history of 20th-century Việt Nam told through four generations of a single family. As...

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer [in Booklist]

05 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Peter Berkrot is not a Japanese speaker – and somehow, he went into the recording studio without pronunciation guidance, an aural detail that unfortunately mars an otherwise stellar presentation of Christian Kiefer’s (Infinite Tides) stunning, slim third novel. With his folksy, inviting delivery, Berkrot magnetically lures...

Five More to Go: Paul Yoon’s Run Me to Earth [in The Booklist Reader]

29 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, Audio, British, Cambodian, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, European, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Sri Lankan American, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon Traversing countries and continents during a half-century, Paul Yoon’s (The Mountain, 2017) second novel unfolds decades of unrelenting loss and meaningless brutality, balanced – somehow – by exquisite kindness and unbreakable bonds. In war-torn Laos, a country brutalized by...

The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-jung, translated with an introduction and notes by Heinz Insu Fenkl [in Booklist]

28 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

The warning comes early: “New readers are advised that this introduction makes certain details of the plot explicit.” For audiences adamant about discovering narratives autonomously, skipping the first track is recommended – but only with the intention of returning to the beginning upon book’s end. Professor/translator/writer...

Five More to Go: Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Repost, Translation

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar Although the page facing the title of Azar’s first novel to be translated into English clearly states, “Translated from the Farsi,” the linguistic enabler remains anonymous; the publisher’s official line is, “the translator of this book has asked...

99 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Afghan American, Audio, Central Asian, Fiction, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

During summer 2005, when “the American war was sort of dozing,” 12-year-old Marwand, his brother, and mother arrived in Logar, Afghanistan to visit extended family. The six years since Marwand’s last visit from the U.S. isn’t enough for Budabash – more wolf than dog –...

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