Category: Book Lists

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Five short books to get you out of a reading slump

Are you in a reading slump? Are you looking for short books to reach your reading goal or just take a break from big books?

Short books are a great way to help get yourself out of a reading slump. Similar to reading short stories, short novels are easy to finish and give you that feeling of accomplishment that makes you want to keep reading.

I love reading short novels. They can act as a palate cleanser in between big books, or help you ramp up into reading other books. Sometimes you just want to read a book that you can finish quickly.

Whatever the reason, I’ve put together a list of five short books. Each of these could easily be finished in a weekend, or maybe a day if you’ve got lots of time to read.

They’re all relatively easy to read and a good way to jump back into reading if you’re in a slump. I tried to include a bit of variation from classics up to some recently released books, hopefully, with a book that might interest anyone.

Photo by Paige Cody on Unsplash

Five short books

Here’s a list of five short books to get you out of a reading slump or just finish quickly.

  1. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886)
  2. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
  3. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (2015)
  4. All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Murderbot Series – 2017)
  5. Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor (2021)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve order them from the oldest published to the newest.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)

by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs

  • Year Published: 1886
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, literary, dark, reflective, sad, medium-paced

By the time he dies, Ivan Ilych has come to understand the worthlessness of his life. Paradoxically, this elevates him above the common man, who avoids the reality of death and the effort it takes to make life worthwhile. In Tolstoy’s own words, “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been . . . most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

Links:

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

by Ernest Hemingway

  • Year Published: 1952
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, literary, adventurous, reflective, slow-paced

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author’s Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.

Links:

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2015)

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot

  • Year Published: 2015 (English version in 2019)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, magical realism, emotional, hopeful, reflective, medium-paced

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

Links:

All Systems Red (Murderbot Series – 2017)

by Martha Wells

  • Year Published: 2017
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, science fiction, adventurous, funny, fast-paced
  • This won both the Hugo and Nebula Award.

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.”

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid–a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

Links:

Remote Control (2021)

by Nnedi Okorafor

  • Year Published: 2021
  • Storygraph Categories:
  • fiction, science fiction, adventurous, dark, mysterious, fast-paced
  • The author is a Nebula and Hugo Award winner

The new book by Nebula and Hugo Award-winner, Nnedi Okorafor.

“She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.”

The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa­­–a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.

Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks–alone, except for her fox companion–searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.

But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which short books you love or that you would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Five books worth the hype

Have you gotten caught up in the booktok or booktuber worlds?

Do you wonder which books are really worth the hype from the book influencers?

I’ve gotten back into reading a lot in the past few years. I’ve always loved reading, but haven’t always made it a priority. And I have to admit that book influencers have definitely helped me fall back in love with reading.

I love that so many people are reading more and starting conversations about books. I love how much more mainstream reading has become and that people are able to craft careers around talking about books. I think it’s a lovely gift that social media has given us.

But that being said, there are a lot of books that get hyped up but may not live up to the hype, or may not be our personal taste.

I’ve put together some of the big books that I believe are genuinely worth the hype.

Photo by Laura Kapfer on Unsplash

Five books worth the booktok hype

Here’s a list of five books from booktok that I believe are worth the hype.

  1. Babel by R.F. Kuang
  2. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin\
  3. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  4. Upstream by Mary Oliver
  5. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve order them from newest to oldest by publication date.

Babel (2022)

by R.F. Kuang

  • Year Published: 2022
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, fantasy, historical, literary, challenging, dark, emotional, medium-paced
  • Talks about the difficulties and nuances of translating literature

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

Links:

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)

by Gabrielle Zevin

  • Year Published: 2022
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, literary, emotional, reflective, sad, medium-paced
  • Important to note, there have been some criticisms of how the author portrays a physical disability and uses it during the story.

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

Links:

Piranesi (2020)

by Susanna Clarke

  • Year Published: 2020
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, fantasy, literary, adventurous, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

Links:

Upstream (2016)

by Mary Oliver

  • Year Published: 2016
  • Storygraph Categories:
    nonfiction, essays, literary, nature, inspiring, reflective, relaxing, slow-paced

Comprising a selection of essays, Upstream finds beloved poet Mary Oliver reflecting on her astonishment and admiration for the natural world and the craft of writing.

As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world.

This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life’s smallest corners.

Links:

The Song of Achilles (2011)

by Madeline Miller

  • Year Published: 2011
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, fantasy, lgbtqia+, literary, adventurous, emotional, sad, medium-paced
  • Winner of the 2012 Orange Prize (now The Women’s Prize for Fiction)

Achilles, “the best of all the Greeks,” son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods’ wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which booktok/booktube books you think are worth the hype. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Women in Translation: 5 books from Southeast Asian women

This month, August, is a chance to celebrate women in translation, specifically women authors who’s works have been translated. There’s so much good translated literature out there. For this month, I’ll be sharing some inspiration for women authors from around the world who have had their work translated into English.

I know a lot of people read works translated from English into their own language, and there’s so many languages that works need to be translated into. But since I only read in English, I’m going to be highlighting works that have been translated into English.

This week we’ll be visiting Southeast Asia, which usually consists of countries including: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Indonesia.

I find that these countries are less likely to be included in lists of translated literature, which makes me feel like it’s even more important to highlight books from this region.

When it is difficult to find women authors from specific countries, it makes me wonder how much we are missing out on. Every country has talented authors, with incredible stories to tell. And it breaks my heart that certain countries are just seen as not a priority for the publishing world.

But the more that people take time to notice and show interest in these countries, the more likely that publishing world will also pay attention. After all, publishing is still a market, so where there is demand, there will be a supply. So let’s create the demand.

Five books from Southeast Asian women

Here’s a list of five books with women authors from Southeast Asia.

  1. Vietnam: Paradise of the Blind by Dương Thu Hương (1988)
  2. Malaysia: The Age of Goodbyes by Li Zi Shu (2010)
  3. Thailand: The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth by วีรพร นิติประภา (Veeraporn Nitiprapha) (2013)
  4. Vietnam: Mãn by Kim Thúy (2013)
    Vietnam
  5. Indonesia: Apple & Knife by Intan Paramaditha (2018)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve ordered them based on the year they were published in their original language (not the year of the English translation).

Paradise of the Blind (1988)

by Dương Thu Hương Translated by Nina McPherson & Phan Huy Đường

  • Year Published: 1988
    English version in 2002
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, historical, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Language: Vietnamese
  • Country: Vietnam
  • Currently banned in Vietnam

Paradise of the Blind is an exquisite portrait of three Vietnamese women struggling to survive in a society where subservience to men is expected and Communist corruption crushes every dream. Through the eyes of Hang, a young woman in her twenties who has grown up amidst the slums and intermittent beauty of Hanoi, we come to know the tragedy of her family as land reform rips apart their village. When her uncle Chinh‘s political loyalties replace family devotion, Hang is torn between her mother‘s appalling self–sacrifice and the bitterness of her aunt who can avenge but not forgive. Only by freeing herself from the past will Hang be able to find dignity –– and a future.

Links:

The Age of Goodbyes (2010)

by Li Zi Shu, translated from Chinese by Y.Z. Chin

  • Year Published: 2010
    English version in 2022
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, emotional, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Language: Chinese
  • Country: Malaysia

By one of Southeast Asia’s most exciting writers, The Age of Goodbyes is a wildly inventive account of family history, political turmoil, and the redemptive grace of storytelling.

In the summer of 1969, in the wake of Malaysia’s deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Third Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; “you” are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of “your” mother’s death, “you” are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding “your” lineage.

The Age of Goodbyes—which begins on page 513, a reference to the riots of May 13, 1969—is the acclaimed debut by Li Zi Shu. The winner of multiple awards and a Taiwanese bestseller, this dazzling novel is a profound exploration of what happens to personal memory when official accounts of history distort and render it taboo.

Links:

The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth (2013)

by วีรพร นิติประภา (Veeraporn Nitiprapha), translated by: Kong Rithdee

  • Year Published: 2013
    English version in 2018
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, magical realism, emotional, slow-paced
  • Language: Thai
  • Country: Thailand
  • Won the prestigious South East Asian Writers (“S.E.A. Write”) Award for fiction and a best-seller in Thailand

On the day Chareeya is born, her mother discovers her father having an affair with a traditional Thai dancer. From then on, Chareey’s life is fated to carry the weight of her parents’ disappointments. She and her sister grow up in a lush riverside town near the Thai capital, Bangkok, captivated by trashy romance novels, classical music and games of make-believe. When the laconic orphan, Pran, enters their world, he unwittingly lures the sisters into a labyrinth of their own making as they each try to escape their intertwined fates.

The original Thai language edition of The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth won the prestigious South East Asian Writers (“S.E.A. Write”) Award for fiction and was best-seller in Thailand. It is translated into English by Thai film critic and recipient of France’s Chevalier dans I’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Kong Rithdee.

Attuned to the addictive rhythms of a Thai soap opera and written with the consuming intensity of a fever dream, this novel opens an insightful and truly compelling window onto the Thai heart.

Links:

Mãn (2013)

by Kim Thúy, translated from French by Sheila Fischman

  • Year Published: 2013
    English version in 2014
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Language: French
  • Country: Vietnam & Canada
  • Kim Thuy is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer, whose debut novel Ru won the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction at the 2010 Governor General’s Awards

Mãn has three mothers: the one who gives birth to her in wartime, the nun who plucks her from a vegetable garden, and her beloved Maman, who becomes a spy to survive. Seeking security for her grown daughter, Maman finds Mãn a husband – a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur who lives in Montreal.

Thrown into a new world, Mãn discovers her natural talent as a chef. Gracefully she practices her art, with food as her medium. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body: they evoke memory and emotion, time and place, and even bring her customers to tears.

Mãn is a mystery – her name means ‘perfect fulfillment’, yet she and her husband seem to drift along, respectfully and dutifully. But when she encounters a married chef in Paris, everything changes in the instant of a fleeting touch, and Mãn discovers the all-encompassing obsession and ever-present dangers of a love affair.

Full of indelible images of beauty, delicacy and quiet power, Mãn is a novel that begs to be savoured for its language, its sensuousness and its love of life.

Links:

Apple & Knife (2018)

by Intan Paramaditha, translated by Stephen J. Epstein

  • Year Published: 2018
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, horror, short stories, dark, medium-paced
  • Language: Bahasa Indonesia
  • Country: Indonesia
  • You may want to check content warnings before reading

Inspired by horror fiction, myths and fairy tales, Apple and Knife is an unsettling ride that swerves into the supernatural to explore the dangers and power of occupying a female body in today’s world.

These short fictions set in the Indonesian everyday—in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on dangdut stages—reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Sometimes wacky and always engrossing, this is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave.

Mara finds herself brainstorming an ad campaign for Free Maxi Pads, with a little help from the menstruation-eating hag of her childhood. Jamal falls in love with the rich and powerful Bambang, but it is the era of the smiling general and, if he’s not careful, he may find himself recruited to Bambang’s brutal cause. Solihin would give anything to make dangdut singer Salimah his wife – anything at all.

In the globally connected and fast-developing Indonesia of Apple and Knife, taboos, inversions, sex and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix full of pointed critiques and bloody mutilations. Women carve a place for themselves in this world, finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books written by Southeast Asian authors.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite book written by a Southeast Asian author, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

Posted on

Women in Translation: 5 books to read from North/East Asia

This month, August, is a chance to celebrate women in translation, specifically women authors who’s works have been translated. There’s so much good translated literature out there. For this month, I’ll be sharing some inspiration for women authors from around the world who have had their work translated into English.

I know a lot of people read works translated from English into their own language, and there’s so many languages that works need to be translated into. But since I only read in English, I’m going to be highlighting works that have been translated into English.

This week we’ll be visiting North/East Asia. Depending on the source, it may call the region either North or East Asia. This area typically includes countries like China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia.

Countries like Japan and South Korea are very prominent in translated literature because their governments actively support translation efforts. Their governments have prioritized translating their national literature as a way of cultural preservation and enabling their local talent to gain international recognition. I think this is amazing, and I would love to see more countries supporting their local talent in this way.

Due to this additional support, you’ll often see a lot of books recommended from these countries, especially when talking about books in translation. I’ve included a few books from Japan and South Korea, but I’ve also included a few others to diversify the list.

Photo by Uchral Sanjaadorj on Unsplash

Five books from North/East Asia

Here’s a list of five books of translated literature with women authors from North/East Asia.

  1. Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (China)
  2. Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin (Taiwan)
  3. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa (Japan)
  4. Human Acts by Han Kang (Korea)
  5. Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (Japan)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published in their original language.

Love in a Fallen City (1946) – China

by Eileen Chang
Translated by Karen S. Kingsbury

  • Year Published: 1946
    (English version in 2006)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, short stories, emotional, mysterious, reflective, slow-paced

Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Links:

Notes of a Crocodile (1994) – Taiwan

by Qiu Miaojin
Translated by Bonnie Huie

  • Year Published: 1994
    (English version in 2017)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, literary, dark, emotional, reflective, medium-paced
  • Qiu Miaojin was posthumously awarded the China Times Literature Award in 1995 for this book

Set in the post-martial-law era of late 1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin’s cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon.

Links:

The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003) – Japan

by Yōko Ogawa
Translated by Stephen Snyder

  • Year Published: 2003
    (English version in 2009)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, literary, emotional, reflective, medium-paced
  • It received the Hon’ya Taisho award and a film adaptation was released in January 2006

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem–ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.

She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities–like the Housekeeper’s shoe size–and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.

Links:

Human Acts (2014) – South Korea

by Han Kang
Translated by Deborah Smith

  • Year Published: 2014
    (English version in 2016)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, historical, literary, dark, emotional, sad, medium-paced
  • It won Korea’s Manhae Prize for Literature and Italy’s Malaparte Prize

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend’s corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma.

Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless. Already a controversial bestseller and award-winning book in Korea, it confirms Han Kang as a writer of immense importance.

Links:

Earthlings (2018) – Japan

by Sayaka Murata
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

  • Year Published: 2018
    (English version in 2020)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, horror, literary, magical realism, challenging, dark, medium-paced
  • Note, this novel deals with many difficult themes, I would recommend checking content warnings before reading if there are any subjects you want to avoid.

Natsuki isn’t like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.

Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki’s family are increasing, her friends wonder why she’s still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki’s childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books written by North/East Asian authors.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite book written by a North/East Asian author, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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The perfect protective membrane

Excerpt from The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei

Photo by Ryan Loughlin on Unsplash

This is an excerpt from the book The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei, translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich.

The ocean made a perfect protective membrane, a thick, robust barrier that could shield humans, animals, and plants from ultraviolet radiation.

Plus, the ocean was the primordial birthplace of all earth’s plants and animals. Back when there was no life on land, it was the ocean that generated the earliest vegetation, and the ocean that eventually produced our most primitive ancestors, These earliest plants and animals evolved in water because sunlight was lethal; the ozone layer had not yet formed. Only when the collective gases exhaled by the denizens of the ocean had reached a critical mass and erupted through the surface and into the atmosphere was the radiation-filtering protective layer formed. And only under the shelter of this newly formed barrier could the first brave organisms crawl to the shore and withstand the assault of sunlight on their vulnerable bodies.

who could have imagined that eons later, in the twenty-first century, they would return to their old ocean home?

But humans, unlike fish or shrimp, were not designed to swim, so it would be necessary to build subaquatic cities. Fortunately, the ocean was abundant with natural resources, and with the right adjustments the sea floor could be adapted for human habitation. Not only that, but the technology for harnessing solar power was improving by the day and could now be used to convert great quantities of energy collected aboveground for use on the ocean floor. Since the sun had forced humanity back into the ocean, it was only fair that humanity took some of its power in return.

But the middle of the twenty-first century there was little habitable land left, and humankind finally invaded the oceans en masse, a process euphemistically referred to as “migration.” During the process of “reclaiming wasteland,” new reserves of crude oil were discovered one after another. This accelerated the rate of underwater construction, which in turn provided a solution to the problem of high unemployment, a surprise benefit of migration to the ocean floor! With great “humanity,” they told themselves, humankind “rescued” all manner of favored flora and fauna by bringing them them along to the bottom of the sea. This time, of course they made sure not to bring cockroaches and mosquitoes, but they also left behind many critical organisms, Waves of human settlers inevitably led to the ecological devastation of the ocean floor, but people felt they’d done their best to act humanely. Don’t blame us, they thought, we did the best we could.

By 2060, the majority of humanity had migrated to the ocean, with only one percent left to eke out a living on the surface. Pretty much all the main infrastructure of human civilization had migrated to the ocean floor, including industrial agriculture and animal husbandry. All that remained aboveground were those historical sites too large to be moved—the pyramids, for example, or the February 28th Incident Memorial Plaques ubiquitous on the island of Taiwan—tough archeologist and tourists still visited the surface. The new sea dwellers also left behind unwanted structures like pollution producing factories and nuclear power plants (which meant, however, that some key personnel were forced to remain on the surface to man the reactors). Also abandoned were prisons and various tools of punishment, since governments universally recognized that leaving convicts on the surface was actually a convenient punishment in and of itself. (Let them burn—who needed the electric chair!)

The earth’s surface, which had once struggled to bear the burden of overpopulation, was now almost completely deserted. Though even now humankind proved reluctant to surrender the legacy of its battles for power, still everything—everything—on the surface of the earth went the way of the Great Wall off China To think that these ambitious marvels of engineering built on the backs of the common people, wound up the playthings of the tourism industry! Their majesty was reduced to an absurd footnotes.

But new man-made landscapes were also propagated on the surface, These new landscapes would have been inconceivable to the people who came before: more extravagant than works by the twentieth-century environmental artist Christo, but also more practical. For example, there were the metastasizing “fields” of solar panel arrays stretching as far as the eye could see, used to harvest solar power for the population under the ocean.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

The Membranes – Summary

Here is the book summary:

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes–heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies–into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

Copyright © 1995 by Chi Ta-Wei.

Translated by: Ari Larissa Heinrich

You can find more details here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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Classics to read for Pride Month

It’s Pride Month! In honour of celebrating Pride Month, I’ll be sharing some LGBTQIA2S+ book recommendations. Keep checking in each week for more recommendations.

Are you tired of reading classics by boring old white men? Here’s your chance to read some queer friendly classics!

Even though most classics represent heteronormative relationships, there have always been people who exist outside those norms. There’s a small portion of classics that represent people within the LGBTQIA2S+ community and I think it’s important to highlight them.

Everyone deserves to see themselves in the books they read.

It’s unfortunate that there aren’t more classics with a range of sexualities portrayed, but sadly, it’s not surprising. Especially since homosexuality has been illegal, and remains illegal in many countries around the world (source).

However, it does make me think about the many works of art that have been lost to history due to society’s limited acceptance of people.

With all the barriers authors faced to get these types of novels published, I think it makes the ones that do exist that much more valuable.

Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

Five classic LGBTQIA2S+ books

Here’s a list of five classic books that represent some aspect of the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

  1. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
  2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
  3. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956)
  4. Maurice by E.M. Forster (1971)
  5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

by Oscar Wilde

  • Year Published: 1890
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, classics, horror, lgbtqia+, literary, dark, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Oscar Wilde’s only novel

Summary:

In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde’s most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.

Links:

Orlando (1928)

by Virginia Woolf

  • Year Published: 1928
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, literary, magical realism, challenging, reflective, slow-paced
  • Considered a feminist classic

Summary:

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth’s court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, 36-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.

Links:

Giovanni’s Room (1956)

by James Baldwin

  • Year Published: 1956
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, literary, emotional, reflective, sad, medium-paced
  • Considered a classic of gay literature, and helped foster discussions of homosexuality and bisexuality in mainstream readers

Summary:

Baldwin’s haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.

Links:

Maurice (1971)

by E.M. Forster

  • Year Published: 1971 (written in 1914)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, literary, emotional, reflective, medium-paced
  • Forster wrote the book in 1914 but wouldn’t let it be published until after his death.

Summary:

Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.

Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).

Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.

Links:

The Color Purple (1982)

by Alice Walker

  • Year Published: 1982
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, historical, lgbtqia+, literary, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance: Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize (making Walker the first black woman to win the prize)

Summary:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Alice Walker’s iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience.

The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker’s epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

Links:

Final thoughts

I’ve only listed five books here, so it’s only a small portion of the classics available. But hopefully something caught your eye.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite classic that represents part of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Around the world in books: Five books by Vietnamese authors

The month of May is often an opportunity to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander people and their heritage. In America the month is called Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in Canada it’s called Asian Heritage Month. For this month, I’ll be sharing books by Asian authors.

I know it’s currently June, but since I missed a week, here’s one more book list with Asian authors for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Have you ever wanted to visit Vietnam? Here’s your chance to visit Vietnam through reading!

Vietnam’s history

Vietnam has such a long history. Throughout their past, many external forces have exerted influence over the Vietnamese. Two of the most recent influences were the French and the Americans.

The French slowly exerted more and more influence over Vietnam over 3.5 centuries, and between 1859-1884, French eroded Vietnam’s sovereignty and forced them to become a French colony. French rule lasted until 1954, with a break during WWII from 1941-1945 when the Japanese took over. In 1954, French Indochina was dissolved into Cambodia, Laos and North and South Vietnam according to the Geneva Accords.

Shortly after the French withdrew, North Vietnam was led by the Viet Minh and the USA started providing military and financial support for South Vietnam. The Vietnam War (or as it’s called in Vietnam the “Resistance war against the United States” (Kháng chiến chống Mỹ) and sometimes called the “American War”) lasted almost 20 years. This war is often seen as a Cold War-era proxy war, as the North was supported by communist parties and the south was supported by the USA and other anti-communist forces.

The Vietnam War has had a huge impact on the Vietnamese people and in turn their literature. There were enormous human casualties, from the 1-3 million Vietnamese that were killed, to the millions of refugees that left the region and the additional 250,000 refugees that died on their way to safety.

Historical impact seen today

All this history has had a huge impact on Vietnam, the Vietnamese people, their culture and even literature. You see it in the banh mi on baguettes that they got from the French and the way that Vietnamese authors are producing literature in different languages and while living outside of Vietnam.

I’ve included a range of books in this list, and notably the books have been written in Vietnamese, French and English. Hopefully this list gives you a glimpse into the range of Vietnamese voices in modern literature and sparks your interest to read more from Vietnamese authors.

Five books from Vietnamese authors

Here’s a list of five books with Vietnamese authors.

  1. Dumb Luck by Vũ Trọng Phụng (1936)
  2. The Crystal Messenger by Phạm Thị Hoài (1988)
  3. Mãn by Kim Thúy (2013)
  4. The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith (2014)
  5. The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (2020)

I’ve listed them in order of when they were published. Keep reading to find out more about each one and at the end there’s a bonus suggestion!

Dumb Luck (1936)

by Vũ Trọng Phụng, translated by Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm and Peter Zinoman

  • Year Published: 1936, English version in 2002
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, dark, funny, medium-paced
  • Language: Vietnamese
  • Banned by the Vietnamese Communist Party, first in North Vietnam from 1960 to 1975, then throughout the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam until 1986

Summary:

Banned in Vietnam until 1986, Dumb Luck-by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung–is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era. First published in Hanoi during 1936, it follows the absurd and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond named Red-haired Xuan. As it charts Xuan’s fantastic social ascent, the novel provides a panoramic view of late colonial urban social order, from the filthy sidewalks of Hanoi’s old commercial quarter to the gaudy mansions of the emergent Francophile northern upper classes. The transformation of traditional Vietnamese class and gender relations triggered by the growth of colonial capitalism represents a major theme of the novel.

Dumb Luck is the first translation of a major work by Vu Trong Phung, arguably the greatest Vietnamese writer of the twentieth century. The novel’s clever plot, richly drawn characters and humorous tone and its preoccupation with sex, fashion and capitalism will appeal to a wide audience. It will appeal to students and scholars of Vietnam, comparative literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, and Southeast Asian civilization.

Links:

The Crystal Messenger (1988)

by Phạm Thị Hoài, translated by Ton-That Quynh-Du

  • Year Published: 1988, English version in 1997
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Language: Vietnamese
  • Described as the ‘renaissance of Vietnamese literature’ and was banned by the Vietnamese government

Summary:

This award winning book has been described as the ‘renaissance of Vietnamese literature’. Written by a young woman in her twenties at the end of an era when Vietnam closed itself off from the world, it is widely regarded as one of the most important works of fiction ever to come out of that country. Ostensibly, The Crystal Messenger is a magical and moving story of two sisters’ journeys to emotional and sexual maturity. But it is also a powerful allegory about the fate of North and South Vietnam, the struggle with reunification after the war, and the effect of consumerism and westernisation on the nation’s soul.

Links:

Mãn (2013)

by Kim Thúy, translated from French by Sheila Fischman

  • Year Published: 2013, English version in 2014
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, literary, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Language: French
  • Kim Thuy is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer, whose debut novel Ru won the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction at the 2010 Governor General’s Awards

Summary:

Mãn has three mothers: the one who gives birth to her in wartime, the nun who plucks her from a vegetable garden, and her beloved Maman, who becomes a spy to survive. Seeking security for her grown daughter, Maman finds Mãn a husband – a lonely Vietnamese restaurateur who lives in Montreal.

Thrown into a new world, Mãn discovers her natural talent as a chef. Gracefully she practices her art, with food as her medium. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body: they evoke memory and emotion, time and place, and even bring her customers to tears.

Mãn is a mystery – her name means ‘perfect fulfillment’, yet she and her husband seem to drift along, respectfully and dutifully. But when she encounters a married chef in Paris, everything changes in the instant of a fleeting touch, and Mãn discovers the all-encompassing obsession and ever-present dangers of a love affair.

Full of indelible images of beauty, delicacy and quiet power, Mãn is a novel that begs to be savoured for its language, its sensuousness and its love of life.

Links:

The Frangipani Hotel (2014)

by Violet Kupersmith

  • Year Published: 2014
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, fantasy, horror, short stories, reflective, medium-paced
  • Language: English
  • Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales

Violet Kupersmith was born in America, but her mother is from Da Nang Vietnam and fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.

Summary:

A beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is asked to drive a dying young man home to his village. A plump Vietnamese-American teenager is sent to her elderly grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City to lose weight, only to be lured out of the house by the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. In these evocative and always surprising stories, the supernatural coexists with the mundane lives of characters who struggle against the burdens of the past.

Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales told to Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost—that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us.

Links:

The Mountains Sing (2020)

by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

  • Year Published: 2020
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, historical, emotional, reflective, sad, medium-paced
  • Language: English
  • Her debut novel and first work in English (known as a poet in Vietnam)

Summary:

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.

Links:

Bonus Suggestion: Modern Vietnamese poet Bao Phi

Bao Phi is a Vietnamese-American spoken word poet and community activist. He was born in Vietnam and raised in Minnesota. His second book of poetry, Thousand Star Hotel, was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award, named by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2017, and was named the best poetry book of 2017 by San Francisco State’s Poetry Center.

Thousand Star Hotel (2017)

by Bao Phi

  • Year Published: 2017
  • Storygraph Categories:
    nonfiction, poetry, race, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance: Bao Phi is a National Poetry Slam finalist.

Summary:

Thousand Star Hotel confronts the silence around racism, police brutality, and the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books written by Vietnamese authors.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite book written by a Vietnamese author, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

Posted on

Around the world in books: Five books from Indonesian authors

The month of May is often an opportunity to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander people and their heritage. In America the month is called Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in Canada it’s called Asian Heritage Month. For this month, I’ll be sharing books by Asian authors.

Have you ever wanted to visit Indonesia? Here’s your chance to visit Indonesia through reading!

Indonesia is incredibly diverse. The nation includes over 17,000 islands and is the world largest archipelagic state. It’s also the 14th largest country in the world (by area), fourth largest by population, and the world’s third largest democracy.

The people and languages are reflect this diversity and are made up of 1,340 recognized ethnic groups in Indonesia. The national language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia, however most Indonesians also speak one of the 700 local languages.

Despite this diversity, Indonesian literature is rarely included in recommended translated literature lists, and most publishers don’t express an interest in Indonesian literature.

Personally, it seems like we are all missing out on an incredible literary opportunity with a huge country being so underrepresented. There are so many unique perspectives and literary talent that the English reading world is unaware of and unable to experience.

To help remedy this missed opportunity, here are a handful of books written by Indonesian authors. Hopefully you find new book that you want to read from this list.

Photo by Tusik Only on Unsplash

Five books from Indonesian authors

Here’s a list of five books with authors from Indonesia and translated from Bahasa Indonesia.

  1. Saman by Ayu Utami (1998)
  2. Kill the Radio by Dorothea Rosa Herliany (2001)
  3. Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan (2002)
  4. Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan (2004)
  5. Apple & Knife by Intan Paramaditha (2018)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed in order of when they were first published.

Saman (1998)

by Ayu Utami, translated by Pamela Allen

  • Year Published: 1998, English version released in 2005
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • This book sparked a new literary movement in Indonesia known as sastra wangi (originally used pejoratively, literally means “fragrant literature”), creating room for an influx of sexually-themed literary works by young Indonesian women.

Summary:

Saman is a story filtered through the lives of its feisty female protagonists and the enigmatic “hero” Saman. It is at o­nce an exposé of the oppression of plantation workers in South Sumatra, a lyrical quest to understand the place of religion and spirituality in contemporary lives, a playful exploration of female sexuality and a story about love in all its guises, while touching o­n all of Indonesia’s taboos: extramarital sex, political repression and the relationship between Christians and Muslims.

Saman has taken the Indonesian literary world by storm and sold over 100,000 copies in the Indonesian language, and is now available for the first time in English.

Links:

Kill the Radio (2001)

by Dorothea Rosa Herliany, translated by Harry Aveling

  • Year Published: 2001

Summary:

Dorothea Rosa Herliany is one of the most important contemporary poets writing in Indonesia. This volume presents a selection of her recent verse in the original Bahasa Indonesian and in English translation.

Herliany is typical of the second generation of Indonesian writers which emerged after the mid-1980s during the New Order of President Suharto. This newer generation knew little of the colonial Dutch civilization and were a generation removed from the revolutionary ardour of the foundation of the nation: to be ‘Indonesian’ was their natural right. They were born and educated in the regions outside of Jakarta and have chosen to remain there. They were educated in the Indonesian language (usually to tertiary level) and the literature on which they were raised was also written in Indonesian.

Kill the Radio contains a range of poems, many of them personal, with a decidedly feminist edge to them, Others grow form Herliany’s experience of, and concern for, an Indonesia undergoing rapid social and political change during the last five years of the 1990s.

Herliany’s writing reveals a struggle to understand human experience in all its reality not as an ideal but as a fact that displays profound suffering and hurt, without, apparently, any hope of redemption…

Links:

Beauty is a Wound (2002)

by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker

  • Year Published: 2002, English version in 2015
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, historical, magical realism, dark, emotional, mysterious, slow-paced
  • Long listed for the International Booker Prize, and won the Best Translated Book Award in 2016

Summary:

The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan’s gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation’s troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million “Communists,” followed by three decades of Suharto’s despotic rule.

Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: “One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years…” Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan’s distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

Links:

Man Tiger (2004)

by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Labodalih Sembiring

  • Year Published: 2004, English version in 2015
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, magical realism, mysterious, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance: long listed for the International Booker Prize

Summary:

A wry, affecting tale set in a small town on the Indonesian coast, Man Tiger tells the story of two interlinked and tormented families and of Margio, a young man ordinary in all particulars except that he conceals within himself a supernatural female white tiger. The inequities and betrayals of family life coalesce around and torment this magical being. An explosive act of violence follows, and its mysterious cause is unraveled as events progress toward a heartbreaking revelation.

Lyrical and bawdy, experimental and political, this extraordinary novel announces the arrival of a powerful new voice on the global literary stage.

Links:

Apple & Knife (2018)

by Intan Paramaditha, translated by Stephen J. Epstein

  • Year Published: 2018
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, horror, short stories, dark, medium-paced
  • Language: Bahasa Indonesia
  • You may want to check content warnings before reading

Summary:

Inspired by horror fiction, myths and fairy tales, Apple and Knife is an unsettling ride that swerves into the supernatural to explore the dangers and power of occupying a female body in today’s world.

These short fictions set in the Indonesian everyday—in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on dangdut stages—reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Sometimes wacky and always engrossing, this is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave.

Mara finds herself brainstorming an ad campaign for Free Maxi Pads, with a little help from the menstruation-eating hag of her childhood. Jamal falls in love with the rich and powerful Bambang, but it is the era of the smiling general and, if he’s not careful, he may find himself recruited to Bambang’s brutal cause. Solihin would give anything to make dangdut singer Salimah his wife – anything at all.

In the globally connected and fast-developing Indonesia of Apple and Knife, taboos, inversions, sex and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix full of pointed critiques and bloody mutilations. Women carve a place for themselves in this world, finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books written by Indonesian authors.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite book written by an Indonesian author, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

Posted on

Around the world in books: Five books from Indian authors

The month of May is often an opportunity to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander people and their heritage. In America the month is called Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in Canada it’s called Asian Heritage Month. For this month, I’ll be sharing books by Asian authors.

Have you ever wanted to visit India? Here’s your chance to visit India through reading!

As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to visit India. I haven’t had the chance yet, but I know one day I will end up going. But until that time I will continue reading books from India to learn more about the country and it’s culture.

Interestingly, English is the second official language of India, with Hindi being the first official language. There are also an additional 22 scheduled languages considered official languages for use in government proceedings. These 22 languages are either widely spoken or considered an official language at a state-level.

India has a very diverse language landscape. There are 122 major languages, with an additional 1,599 used in India. In the 2018 census, there was a total of 19,569 unique mother tongues listed on the census. But a vast majority, 96.71%, of the population have one of the scheduled languages as their mother tongue (Source).

Since there are so many languages used within India, you’ll notice that Indian literature spans many languages. Many Indian authors also write books in English. You’ll see a similar diversity in the books listed below.

I believe this also poses unique accessibility barriers for Indian literature. Books written in English are easily accessible to the rest of the English speaking world, but often times the lesser known languages may have difficulty getting translated.

Photo by Debashis RC Biswas on Unsplash

Five books from Indian authors

Here’s a list of five books with Indian authors.

  1. The Crooked Line: Terhi Lakir by Ismat Chughtai (1944) – translated from Urdu
  2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997) – written in English
  3. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008) – written in English
  4. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree (2018) – translated from Hindi
  5. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi (2019) – written in English

They are listed in order of when they were published. Keep reading to find out more about each one.

The Crooked Line: Terhi Lakir (1944)

by Ismat Chughtai, translated from Urdu by Tahira Naqvi

  • Year Published: 1944 (English version in 1995)
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, lgbtqia+, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance: An influential work of Urdu fiction from a feminist writer of that time

Summary:

In India’s colonial past, in a time of political and social revolution, Ismat Chughtai masterfully unfolds her magna opus, The Crooked Line: the semi-autobiographical tale of a fiery-spirited, middle-class Muslim girl bent on exploring the shape and nature of consuming desire. Writing with the same honesty and passion as her scandalous short-story, “The Quilt,” Chughtai exposes the complex relationships developed between women living and working in relative seclusion, and the intellectual and emotional contradictions lying in the heart of a rebellious country on the brink of independence from the British Raj and ultimately Partition.

Links:

The God of Small Things (1997)

by Arundhati Roy, written in English

  • Year Published: 1997
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, classics, historical, literary, emotional, reflective, sad, slow-paced
  • Importance: Winner of the Booker Prize in 1997, and the Dublin Literary Award Nominee in 1999

Summary:

Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.

Links:

Sea of Poppies (2008)

by Amitav Ghosh, written in English

  • Year Published: 2008
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, historical, literary, adventurous, challenging, medium-paced
  • Importance: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008
  • Part of the Ibis trilogy

Summary:

At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton.

Links:

Tomb of Sand (2018)

by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

  • Year Published: 2018
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, literary, emotional, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Language: Hindi
  • Importance: Winner of International Book Prize in 2022

Summary:

An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a hijra (trans) woman – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more ‘modern’ of the two.

At the older woman’s insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.

Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree’s playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

Links:

Burnt Sugar (2019)

by Avni Doshi, written in English

  • Year Published: 2019
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, contemporary, literary, dark, emotional, reflective, slow-paced
  • Importance: Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize
  • Originally published in India under the title Girl in White Cotton

Summary:

In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her loveless marriage to join an ashram, endured a brief stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents), and spent years chasing after a dishevelled, homeless ‘artist’ – all with her young child in tow. Now she is forgetting things, mixing up her maid’s wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her.

This is a love story and a story about betrayal. But not between lovers – between mother and daughter. Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar unpicks the slippery, choking cord of memory and myth that binds two women together, making and unmaking them endlessly.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books written by Indian authors.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. If you have a favourite book written by an Indian author, please feel free to share it in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Around the world in books: Five books from Thai authors

The month of May is often an opportunity to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander people and their heritage. In America the month is called Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in Canada it’s called Asian Heritage Month. For this month, I’ll be sharing books by Asian authors.

Have you ever wanted to visit Thailand? Here’s your chance to visit Thailand through reading!

Thailand is a really common tourist destination, but unfortunately there’s a limited number of works translated from Thai. Translating any work is a very time consuming and expensive process, requiring incredible skills in two languages.

Publishers are unlikely to put the time and effort into translating a book when they are unsure if the book will have an audience or do well financially. However, this can cause a negative cycle, where there’s so few options that people are unaware of Thai literature, causing lower demand and reinforcing a lack of access.

Some countries disrupt the cycle by providing funding for translations and increasing access, helping to develop a demand for their literature. South Korea and Japan are great examples of this. Their governments provide significant funding to support translators and translations of literary works, which has greatly increased global access to their literature. You can see this whenever you look up recommendations for translated Asian literature, the majority of the suggestions will be Korean and Japanese. Increasing access has also increased demand.

However, not all governments are able to or have chosen to provide funding for translation. But we can choose to promote and show our support for literature in languages, like Thai, that have fewer translated works. We can show support by buying and reading these books, and just increasing awareness and interest by talking about them.

This is an opportunity to show some support for Thai literature!

Photo by Evan Krause on Unsplash

Five books from Thai authors

Here’s a list of five books with authors from Thailand. All but one have been translated from Thai.

  1. The Judgement by ชาติ กอบจิตติ (Chart Korbjitti)
  2. Moving Parts by ปราบดา หยุ่น (Prabda Yoon)
  3. Bright by เดือนวาด พิมวนา (Duanwad Pimwana)
  4. The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth by วีรพร นิติประภา (Veeraporn Nitiprapha)
  5. A Good True Thai by Sunisa Manning

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of publication date in their original language (the English version typically gets published much later).

1. The Judgement (1981)

by ชาติ กอบจิตติ (Chart Korbjitti), translated by Phongdeit Jiangphatthana-Kit & Marcel Barang

  • Year Published: 1981 (English version in 2003)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, reflective, medium-paced
  • Won the 1982 South East Asian Writers (“S.E.A. Write”) Award

Summary:

This is the story of a young man who took as his wife a widow who was slightly deranged. The story would probably have ended there had the widow not been his father’s wife…

Fak is the humble janitor of a provincial temple school. A former novice with the prospect of an outstanding career as a monk, he defrocks to help his ageing, struggling father. While Fak is in the army, his father takes a wife. When the old man dies, Fak shares his hut with the widow. As he repels her advances and protects her from a hostile community, he falls prey to prejudice and misunderstandings from his neighbours, and there is nothing he can do to overturn the people’s judgment. He finds solace in alcohol, which ‘liberates’ him by providing oblivion…

Links:

2. Moving Parts (2002)

by ปราบดา หยุ่น (Prabda Yoon), translated by Mui Poopoksakul

  • Year Published: 2002 (English version in 2018)
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, short stories, challenging, dark, reflective, medium-paced
  • ปราบดา หยุ่น (Prabda Yoon) won the 2002 S.E.A. Write Award for another book of his short stories

Summary:

Surreal and puncturing short stories from the Thai master of the form.

In a pink-walled motel, a teenage prostitute brings a grown man to tears. A love-struck young boy holds the dismembered hand of his crush, only to find himself the object of a complex ménage à trois. A naked body falls from the window of a twenty-story building, while two female office-workers offer each other consolation in the elevator…

In these wry and unsettling stories, Prabda Yoon once again illuminates something of the strangeness of modern cultural life in Bangkok. Disarming the reader with surprising charm, intensity and delicious horror, he explores what it means to have a body, and to interact with those of others.

Supported by English PEN Translates.

Links:

3. Bright (2003)

by เดือนวาด พิมวนา (Duanwad Pimwana), translated by Mui Poopoksakul

  • Year Published: 2003 (English version in 2019)
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, literary, hopeful, reflective, sad, medium-paced
  • Honorable mention in the Global Humanities Translation Prize
  • เดือนวาด พิมวนา (Duanwad Pimwana) is an important women’s voice in contemporary Thai literature

Summary:

When five-year-old Kampol is told by his father to wait for him in front of some run-down apartment buildings, the confused boy does as told―he waits, and waits, and waits, until he realizes his father isn’t coming back anytime soon. Adopted by the community, Kampol is soon being raised by figures like Chong the shopkeeper, who rents out calls on his telephone and goes into debt while extending his customers endless credit. Kampol also plays with local kids like Noi, whose shirt is so worn that it rips right in half, and the sweet, deceptively cute toddler Penporn.

Dueling flea markets, a search for a ten-baht coin lost in the sands of a beach, pet crickets that get eaten for dinner, bouncy ball fads in school, and loneliness so merciless that it kills a boy’s appetite all combine into Bright, the first-ever novel by a Thai woman to appear in English translation. Duanwad Pimwana’s urban, and at times gritty, vignettes are balanced with a folk-tale-like feel and a charmingly wry sense of humor. Together, these intensely concentrated, minimalist gems combine into an off-beat, highly satisfying coming-of-age story of a very memorable young boy and the age-old legends, practices, and personalities that raise him.

Links:

4. The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth (2013)

by วีรพร นิติประภา (Veeraporn Nitiprapha), translated by Kong Rithdee

  • Year Published: 2013 (English version in 2018)
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, literary, magical realism, emotional, slow-paced
  • Won the S.E.A. Write Award for fiction and a best-seller in Thailand

Summary:

On the day Chareeya is born, her mother discovers her father having an affair with a traditional Thai dancer. From then on, Chareey’s life is fated to carry the weight of her parents’ disappointments. She and her sister grow up in a lush riverside town near the Thai capital, Bangkok, captivated by trashy romance novels, classical music and games of make-believe. When the laconic orphan, Pran, enters their world, he unwittingly lures the sisters into a labyrinth of their own making as they each try to escape their intertwined fates.

The original Thai language edition of The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth won the prestigious South East Asian Writers (“S.E.A. Write”) Award for fiction and was best-seller in Thailand. It is translated into English by Thai film critic and recipient of France’s Chevalier dans I’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Kong Rithdee.

Attuned to the addictive rhythms of a Thai soap opera and written with the consuming intensity of a fever dream, this novel opens an insightful and truly compelling window onto the Thai heart.

Links:

5. A Good True Thai (2020)

by Sunisa Manning

  • Year Published: 2020
  • Storygraph Categories: fiction, contemporary, challenging, informative, reflective, slow-paced
  • Finalist for the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize

Note, this is not translated, it was originally written in English. The author, Sunisa Manning, was born and raised in Bangkok by Thai and American parents. She also studied in the USA, and has a Bachelors degree in English Literature from Brown University and an MFA (Master’s in Fine Arts) in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Summary:

In 1970s Thailand, three young people meet each other with fateful results.

Det has just lost his mother, the granddaughter of a king. He clings to his best friend Chang, a smart boy from the slums, as they go to college; while there, Det falls for Lek, a Chinese immigrant with radical ideals. Longing for glory, Det journeys into his friends’ political circles, and then into the Thai jungle to fight. During Thailand’s most famous period of political and artistic openness, these three friends must reconcile their deep feelings for one another with the realities of perilous political revolution.

Links:

Final thoughts

I love reading translated fiction because it gives you such insight to the way different people live. You may struggle with not recognizing names or terms of things that are uncommon in your country, but you can always do a quick search to find out what it means.

I hope this list serves as inspiration for one of the books you’ll read in the future.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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