Xiaolu Guo needs no introduction. Born in a Zhejiang fishing village, studied in Beijing, moved to London in 2002. Guo has directed several movies and documentaries since moving to the UK, and is perhaps best known for her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and her memoir Once Upon a Time in the East, …
Asian Literature
Hiromi Kawakami has made a name for herself as a writer with a defined sense of time and place, and how these forces change us. In Strange Weather in Tokyo, her lovers represent two periods of Japan’s history and how they must court one another in the present. In The Ten Loves of Nishino, ten …
In the afterword of The Beast Warrior, Nahoko Uehashi writes that the book’s prequel, The Beast Player, “was like a beautiful closed circle”, that it didn’t require a sequel. After reading both books, one immediately after the other, it’s impossible to agree with that statement. The Beast Warrior not only feels like a true successor …
Soji Shimada is a legend of genre fiction in Japan, standing at the top of an impressive mountain of great whodunnit writers. But here, the author of Murder in the Crooked House and The Tokyo Zodiac Murders has turned his ambitions to science fiction, while still maintaining that knack for suspense, tension, and mystery. One …
Some of the best-loved works of literature in the 20th century came from a post-independence India. Works by Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy are synonymous with great modern literature, but there are many more Indian novels in English for you to discover. And here are just a few of the best. Indian Literature in English: …
Translated from the Mandarin by Darryl Sterk Those of us who read a broad spectrum of world literature in translation often do so in order to broaden our perspectives, understand other cultures’ ways of writing, processing the world, and expressing themselves through art. With Taiwan being one of my favourite countries and cultures, I’ve read …
Translated from the Japanese by Emily Balistrieri Best known as one of Studio Ghibli’s most beloved movies, directed by Hayao Miyazaki back in 2003, Kiki’s Delivery Service, much like Howl’s Moving Castle, began its life as a children’s novel. But while the novel of Howl’s Moving Castle was written by a beloved Welsh author, Kiki …
Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot In a Tokyo café which has stood since the Edo period, there is a chair at the furthest point from the door. Local legend says this chair can transport you back through time as long as you follow a specific list of rules. The legend is true, as …
Japan has provided the world with a generous spectrum of books in translation. Almost every genre and style of book has a solid handful of Japanese books in translation. But how about Japanese children’s books? For young readers in the West, what innovative and magical Japanese books are available in translation? Well, quite a few …
Arid Dreams, the much-anticipated collection by Duanwad Pinwana, is, remarkably, (outside of academia), her first time being published in English internationally. That is, along with her novel Bright – released at the same time as this collection. After reading these stories, I’m so grateful to Mui Poopoksakul for translating so elegantly and beautifully, and for …