We are often told the right ways to love and be loved: what our expectations of love should be and how we ourselves should behave in love. We can predict a good marriage, and should expect one, too. We know what a friend should rightly be called on to do in the name of trust …
Literature
Tiffany Tsao is a writer and translator. She is the author of Under Your Wings (forthcoming with Atria Books in the US as The Majesties) and the Oddfits fantasy series. Her translations from Indonesian to English include Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s wonderful poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus, Dee Lestari’s novel Paper Boats, and Laksmi Pamuntjak’s The Birdwoman’s Palate. Her translations of Sergius Seeks …
As a reader, I’ve been harbouring an impatient lust for some quality contemporary writing which captures the gothic legacy of Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, Bram Stoker et al. A few have come along recently and entertained well enough – writers such as Jessie Burton and Sarah Perry – but their hype, in my opinion, far …
Translated by David Brookshaw This riveting novel, more than any other I’ve read in recent memory, cemented for me the true value of translated literature. I write predominantly about translated literature because it’s the most valuable, intimate way of learning true empathy for another culture, especially one we may know next-to-nothing about. Through Woman of …
Translated from the French by Euan Cameron ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ is a metaphor. It’s about humanity; it’s not really about books. This is important because we do judge books by their cover art, and their titles, and their fonts. The Office of Gardens and Ponds has the most beautiful cover I’ve …
Through Ponti, we learn that one universal truth about love – paternal, romantic, platonic – is that it doesn’t ebb and flow. It falters, judders, gets lost and thrown out. It gets exposed and embarrassed, like a child. It is bled dry and shrivelled like fruit. We also learn that people can be a bit …
Translated from the Korean by Janet Hong More often than not, when a musician finishes an album, their first job is to figure out what order the tracks should be played in. There’s a craft to getting the flow of the album right; do you start with a bang, or a slow crawl? Is there …
The ethos and approach to publishing of Red Circle Authors Limited is everything that we at Books and Bao cherish. As someone who howls from the mountaintops about the importance of Anglophones reading more translated literature from across the globe, it is thrilling to see a small publishing house release a selection of Japanese stories …
Here is one of those rare books that has a lot to unpack – metaphor, motifs, motivations – but proves to be, nonetheless, completely accessible. More than that, it is compelling, carried by a desperate forward momentum that pleads with the reader to keep pushing on. It has all the page-turning fervour of a thriller …
Here is the latest in Comma Press’ fantastic vision of gathering short stories from cities all around the globe, translating them, and binding them together in beautiful collections, dubbed A City in Short Fiction. Following the massive success of such collections as The Book of Tokyo, The Book of Gaza, and The Book of Istanbul, …