In his book China in Ten Words, author Yu Hua discusses in detail the multiple plights of the writers and artists of China. Censorship, legal battles, ownership; so many of a writer’s rights and freedoms can be put at risk, and they are on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter if these are the best …

Born in Santiago, Chile in 1953 but spending much of his youth in Mexico and his later adult life in Spain, Roberto Bolaño had already become a sensation in the Spanish speaking literary world before his untimely death in 2003. Sadly, it’s only really in the years following his death that he’s started to gain wider recognition …

Born into a wealthy Osaka family in 1899, Yasunari Kawabata lived through a tragic childhood, becoming orphaned at the age of four after which he was raised by his grandparents who themselves both passed away by the time he reached his fifteenth year. He endured the sorrow of his early years and went on to …

In 2017 the Nobel Prize for Literature was won by the illustrious Kazuo Ishiguro, and though he is a British citizen and writes exclusively in English, he is of Japanese birth and his first two books were set in the land he first called home. Ishiguro is my favourite author, and his win had me …

When I first read and reviewed Banana Yoshimoto’s seminal work, Kitchen, I mentioned how it tackled ‘the brevity of life, and the dangerous potential of love and happiness to be painfully fleeting’. This theme is not only true for Kitchen but for all of Yoshimoto’s writing. It is, in a nutshell, what makes her tick …