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, …
Willow Heath
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 …
Not long ago, my friend Taylor (of the publishing house Honford Star) offered an opinion about literature: that books longer than 300 pages rarely justify their own length. This got me thinking about the fantasy genre, and whether or not so many beloved fantasy epics need to be as long as they typically are. While …
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 …
Translated from the Spanish by Fionn Petch How do you begin to discuss the narrative, historical, and cultural impact of music on the human experience? Do you explore the sounds of nature? Provide anecdotes about the gold record aboard the Voyager? Tell the wild story of an enormous organ that took fifteen years to build, …
Williamsburg, Brooklyn is a delightful microcosm of all that’s trendy with today’s millennials. To our UK-based readers, it is to New York what Bristol and Brighton are to, well, all of England. It’s also in Williamsburg where you’ll find the best bookstores of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn area has vegan cafes, record stores, poetry events, and …
East Asian culture — as a broad scope — has been synonymous with health and wellness for centuries, from Thai massage to Japanese onsen. But South Korea, in particular, has its own vast wealth of places where those looking to unwind, relax, and soothe their aching bodies or minds can go to escape it all. …
If there’s one country’s food that has taken off on a global scale this past decade, it’s Korean food. Second only to kpop music, the cuisine of South Korea is one of the nation’s biggest draws, and rightly so. Korean food is varied, indulgent, experimental, and exciting. And when you visit South Korea, what to …
William Shakespeare was the greatest poet the English language has ever seen, wrapping up his poetry in exciting and tragic dramas and folktales. His works have had a greater impact on the Western world than we could ever understand, and a part of that is the world of visual arts. Fans of Shakespeare show their …