Award-winning Korean author Hye-young Pyun, a writer who excels at creating and controlling her tragic heroes like a puppet master does a marionette, is my favourite Korean author in translation. Her works The Hole and City of Ash and Red are masterpieces of genre fiction which both carved out new niches within the psychological horror …
Willow Heath
For the past several years, there have emerged many successful films and books – both fiction and not – that have endeavoured to sing for the unsung voices of women throughout history. Women of science, mathematics, literature, politics, music, and more who, until now, were nameless and faceless – unmentioned in the male-dominated history books. …
With the Normal People TV series out now and Sally Rooney’s phenomenally grounded, honest, and cutting novel almost two years old, it’s time to look at the best books like Normal People for readers who have recently rediscovered the novel or viewers who have been entranced by the Normal People TV series. Normal People is …
Any and all poems can seem daunting to those wishing to dip their toe into the vast and deep waters of poetry. There is so much nervousness and intimidation to feel, and the same questions are asked over and again: Where do I begin? Will I understand it? What am I supposed to feel? Is …
Comma Press has, for several years now, been collecting short stories from authors based in cities around the world. Stories that speak to the cities they’re about. Stories that bring the city to life in surreal, explorative, and revelatory ways. The Book of Shanghai is easily my favourite in this series since The Book of …
How do I know if my story is worth writing? This is a question I imagine must often pop into the minds of writers considering a memoir, be it about their career, their travels, or anything at all. What makes me stand out? What makes my story interesting? Well, as the only gaijin in the …
Book blogging is an immensely satisfying hobby. It transforms the traditionally passive pastime of reading into something active, engaging, and often challenging. It encourages you to come at a book from various angles, to read a wider variety of genres and authors. It builds you a community of like-minded readers who are excited to discuss …
So you want to start reading Haruki Murakami? You’ve seen his overwhelming popularity both in Japan and the West; you’ve heard the whispers, over and over, that he might finally win the Nobel Prize for Literature; you want to know what all the fuss is about. Murakami can be accessible and inaccessible in equal parts, …
Books and video games. Two artistic mediums that are not historically compared, not in the same way that books are to movies, or indeed games are to movies. And yet, for countless people, these are two hobbies that overlap beautifully. That goes double for those of us who prefer single-player narrative video games and hate …
We’re living through a turbulent and unknowable time where all aspects of life are shifting. What was once clear is now murky, and nothing is certain anymore. For many of us, the first thing to go was our enjoyment of simple pleasures like reading (myself included). Where did all that happy reading go? Many of …