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Arab literature is rising in popularity – not yet soaring, but with Celestial Bodies having just won the Man Booker International Prize 2019, we’re going to be seeing an upwards trajectory that gets steeper and steeper in the months and years to come. As an introduction to Arab literature and anyone looking to explore its …

Read More about Review: Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi

“I’ll give you some advice if you’re sad, because the story ends here. Invite home a ragged girl panhandler who needs somewhere to sleep and something to eat … Stop in the subway and talk to the psychotic hookers … Ask where she comes from, what she needs, what you can help with, what she …

Read More about Review: The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg

Here is a Japanese novel about social outcasts and the struggling and underappreciated working class, written by a social outcast, and translated by a proud socialist. Tokyo Ueno Station provides a harsh and honest look at the ways in which twentieth-century Japan has treated its people. Yu Miri was born in Japan to Korean parents, …

Read More about Review: Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Across Asia, women writers are changing the literary landscape by pointing a finger at the patriarchy, by writing clever and innovative genre fiction, by highlighting their unique histories and politics, and this creating exciting and thrilling literature. Here, we have been very excited to create a list of comics and graphic novels by, who we …

Read More about 12 Excellent Books and Comics by Asian Women in Translation (2020)

The feeling of restlessness comes hand-in-hand with the sorrow of parting ways with a place or a person. In All My Goodbyes, Mariana Dimópulos distils these feelings and all their ravaging effects on us into 130 gripping pages. In a single afternoon reading All My Goodbyes, readers will pass through a handful of different countries …

Read More about Review: All My Goodbyes by Mariana Dimópulos

Translated by Megan McDowell  There are many ways to approach creating a book of short stories: you can focus on a theme and explore it from different angles, you can write about a single location – a city or a country, or you can simply write what comes to mind. Wait for those stories that …

Read More about Review: Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin

Two months ago I had already decided on my favourite novel, and novelist, of 2018: Convenience Store Woman and its author Sayaka Murata. I loved this book for its daring to go against the norm, something that is often far more punk rock here in Japan than it is in the West. But as we …

Read More about Review: The Lonesome Bodybuilder (Picnic in the Storm)