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Discover some of the most fascinating literature from Butan with these twelve books. We hear a lot about the works of fiction and nonfiction from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka or India, but hardly anything from the peaceful nation, Bhutan. In fact, news from Bhutan rarely features in many newspapers. As a result, people know …

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Written and drawn by Ichigo Takano, the Orange manga is a thought-provoking and heartwarming story told through the eyes of its main protagonist, Naho, a second year high school student. We also follow the story of Naho’s 27-year-old future self (seen mostly through letters from the future). But while Orange is told through her eyes, …

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Romance is a curious genre, given that so many books, films, TV shows, even video games often feature romances but aren’t necessarily of the romance genre. When it comes to romance manga, however, the romance really is the point. Romance manga also stretches so many different genres, the terms of which can be a little …

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Taylor Bradley from publisher Honford Star shares insight into their process of choosing local cover designers for their East Asian books and why they wouldn’t consider doing it any other way. For the first book that we published at Honford Star, we made a small but hugely influential decision – we’d hire a Korean artist …

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I’ve written and spoken before about how exciting Chinese literature in the 21st Century is. If you aren’t paying attention to the wealth of imaginative, surreal, political, and evocative Chinese novels in translation right now, you really should be. Chinese literature, however, has a very particular legacy. So much so, in fact, that this legacy …

Read More about Why Monkey King is One of the Four Great Chinese Novels

With the rise of Superman and Batman almost a hundred years ago, the US became the home of comic books. Then, before the turn of the 21st Century, eyes turned towards Japan and its manga industry. Today, it’s Korean manhwa (also known as webtoons) that have the eager attention of so many comics fans. We …

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Much like how Netflix and HBO sparked a new golden age of TV a few years ago, shonen manga is seeing its own new golden age. In the 90s, there was Dragon Ball. Ten years later, we had the ‘big three’ of Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. Now, we have series’ like My Hero Academia, …

Read More about Why You Need to Read Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku Manga

2020 was a really excellent year for literature in translation, with some stand-out new Korean books that included the spectacular Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo (tr. Jamie Chang). 2021, however, is looking to top last year’s offering of Korean books by offering us a refreshing selection of genre fiction and queer fiction. Until …

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