The Bridegroom – stories by Ha Jin

May 26, 2009 in Asian Authors, Authors writing about Asia by CatThief | No comments

THE BRIDEGROOM is a collection of short fiction from National Book Award-winning author of Waiting.  There are twelve stories set in contemporary China in the which men and women struggle with the same issues of quiet desperation, greed, and honesty that we all face.  Ha Jin makes these issues so plain and so recognizable in his very simply set out society that we are immediately aware and continue on with the story waiting to see what path the character will take.  Whatever path it is, we are made to understand it and empathize with the person and his/her struggle to reach a decision.  There seems to be no actual right or wrong, but only circumstance, family, loyalty, and all the bits and pieces of upbringing and experience that make people what they are and who can judge the right or wrong of that.

We have a man who finds himself arrested for the “bourgeois crime” of homosexuality.  Another story centers on a man who loses his memory and lives for months as a simple worker.  Then upon returning to his old life finds himself an inconvenience to his family!  Also, a piece about a workers’ strike gone wrong through a misunderstanding of how things are handled in an American run company.  I won’t give you any more hints.  You’ve got to read these stories yourself.  They are all superb.

The Bridegroom is an exciting work of short fiction and I recommend it. 

 Ha Jin has previously won the Hemingway/PEN Award for first fiction for his story collection Ocean of Words and the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction for Under the Red Flag.  Among his many awards, in 2004 he won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his novel War Trash.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

May 16, 2009 in Asian Authors, Authors writing about Asia by CatThief | No comments

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, winner of the 1997 Booker Prize, is a novel to think about.  It is the beautifully written story of an Indian family in the state of Kerala on the southernmost tip of India.  The twins, Rahel and Esthappen, create their own childhood surrounded by the idiosycrasies, cruelties, craziness and love of their extended family.  The sameness of each day is acceptable until their English cousin and her mother come to visit for Christmas.  Everything changes.  Tragedy, secrets and shame and helplessness suddenly embrace each day.  The twins try to survive.  Those around them seem beyond control.  The God of Small Things reigns for the big things are unbearable. 

This is a  great novel.  READ IT.

Arundhati Roy was trained as an architect.  She has worked as a production designer and has written the screenplays for two films.  The God of Small Things, winner of the Booker Prize in 1997, is Ms. Roy’s first novel.

The Caprices by Sabina Murray

April 29, 2009 in Authors writing about Asia by CatThief | No comments

THE CAPRICES is a fabulous book of short stories set in the Philippines, New Guinea and Malaysia during the Japanese occupation of World War II.   Murray brings to life civilians, soldiers, survivors and conquerors.   Amelia Earhart spends her last days in captivity.  An Indian officer fighting for the British, yet subject to their prejudice against his race, questions his reasoning.  American soldiers lost in New Guinea learn to overcome their differences to survive. 

These and other stories are intriguingly based on a time and place most of us have forgotten.  I happily read this book from beginning to end very quickly and enjoyed every minute of it.  READ IT.

Sabina Murray was born in 1968 and grew up in the Philippines and Australia.  She is the author of the novel Slow Burn and has worked as a screenwriter.  Murray is currently writer in residence at Phillips Academy, Andover.

Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap

March 11, 2009 in Asian Authors, Authors writing about Asia by CatThief | No comments

SIGHTSEEING is a collection of seven short stories that take place in Thailand.  They are stories about parents, children, the people of Thailand, farangs (westerners), unwelcome transients, lovers and enemies AND a pig named Clint Eastwood – one of my favorites. 

Thailand is the setting, but it could be anywhere.  Rattawut Lapcharoensap whirls us through ordinary life of the heart no matter where we live it.  These stories feel real.  Why they could happen to me – maybe some of them have, or will. 

What one of us has not known of a parent who protected a son from war, a boy in love with a girl of the “wrong” race, a group of illegal immigrants working for practically nothing just to be in a free country, a sick old man adjusting to living with his son and foreign wife and children and those are just some of the subjects of Sightseeing. 

I am so impressed by this book.  Rattawut Lapcharoensap has given me a look at Thai life and made me realize that with a few differences of custom we all feel the same hurt, pain, anger and love.  The writing is brilliant and powerful, but most of all interesting and oh so readable.  READ THIS BOOK.  It will make you think just a bit differently and a lot bigger.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap was born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok.  His honors include the David TK Wong Fellowship, The Avery Jules Hopwood Award and the Andrea Beauchamp Prize.

An irresistable book from my Bookshelf

February 26, 2009 in Bookshelf by CatThief | No comments

THE TERROR by Dan Simmons   I couldn’t resist reading this book and since it is 955 pages long, you my fellow readers get to hear about it.  Although it doesn’t fall into any of our Authors Asia categories, it fits into my own category of “I couldn’t put it down.”  Every time I tried, I had to pick it back up again.

The Terror is a fascinating, well researched historical novel of the very real 1845 Franklin Artic Expedition from England to the Northwest Passage.  Two ships, The Erebus and The Terror, under the command of Sir John Franklin and Captain Francis Rawdon Moria Crozier respectively, were to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Artic and complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been charted from both the east and west but never entirely navigated.

The expedition sailed from England in May 1845 and the ships were last seen entering Baffin Bay in August 1845.   They were never seen again.  The disappearance of the Franklin expedition set off a massive search effort in the Arctic and the broad circumstances of the expedition’s fate was revealed during a series of expeditions between 1848 and 1866.  Both ships had become icebound and were abandoned by their crews. 

What happened to those very real men and how those men, felt and acted and reacted has been imagined in vivid detail for us by Dan Simmons.  The book is filled with rich characters, incredible hardship, brutality and terror.  It is one of history’s mysteries unraveled by a master and just maybe he is very close to the truth.  We’ll never know.  This book draws you in and never lets you go.  Read it.

Dan Simmons is the author of many sci-fi and mystery books.  Some of my favorites are Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Summer of Night and The Hollow Man.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

February 18, 2009 in Asian Authors, Authors writing about Asia by CatThief | No comments

The opium trade and the British Colonial Empire in India have many stories to tell and Amitav Ghosh has involved us deeply in the lives of not only the people of the Empire, but especially the people of the country.  The backs of the those that the opium trade has rested upon bear their lives in silence, carry their burdens like animals and endure the whip at each mistake.  Yet, they persist, they dream, they love and these characters with their unique stories are finally brought together on the ship Ibis.  This scraggley group of slaves, prisoners, Indians and Westerners are, for better or worse, the family of the Ibis on its way across the Black Sea to the Opium Wars.  

This is a wonderful historical adventure – a well researched page turner and I am glad to say the first book of a trilogy.  I await the next two.

Amitav Ghosh has is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel The Glass Palace (which was superb).

Sister India by Peggy Payne

January 15, 2009 in Authors writing about Asia by CatThief | No comments

The Saraswati Guest House on the banks of the Ganges River in Varanasi, India is run by Madame Natraja, a 400 pound expatriate from North Carolina.  She had come to India as a young woman to bury her pain and has not quite managed it the years and layers of fat which disgust most of the English speaking guests at the Saraswati.  Yet under the mountain of flesh lies a cleverness and absorption of Indian life which is impressive.  While she disgusts us, we can’t help but see her and perhaps understand her grief and desire to forget.  Yet no one can ever really forget and we all carry our grief in one way or another.  Natraja’s is just more visible.  The story takes place during a time of upheaval between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Varanasi.  Guests can’t get their scheduled flights out,  a curfew is declared – no one is allowed on the streets without a special pass but for a few hours a day.  It seems to go on forever.  The guests are restless and feel desperate and confined with their own problems.  Natraja wants them gone, but instead their trials and her own seem to increase with each hour and action must be taken.

The New York Times said “Sister India …is an accomplished work by a writer with a keen sense of the precarousness of our lives and the distances we are prepared to go to escape them.”

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

January 5, 2009 in Asian Authors by CatThief | No comments

Kenji is a 20 year old tour guide of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife.  He is unlicensed and advertises in only one paper, but manages to do well enough to have a decent apartment, a nice girlfriend and continue lying to his mother about going to college.  Then along comes Frank, an American, who hires him for three nights to show him the sexy side of the nightlife.  Of course this is Kenji’s job, the money is good, but there is something about Frank.  Just something not quite right, just something a little scarey.  And off we go into a story so intriuging and crazy that we have fallen into the miso soup right along with Kenji and Frank.

I love Kenji and connected with him immediately.  He became my friend and his emotions, fears, terrors and reactions mine.   Frank – well you’ve got to read the book.  Frank is a frightening piece of work.

This is a book of mayhem, murder, fear, friendship and such craziness that you occasionally have to laugh.  Yet I found some truths about our reactions to fear that it was hard to ignore.  It is a quick and very entertaining read.

Ryu Murakami first novel, which appeared in English as Almost Transparent Blue, was awarded Japan’s most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies.  His other books are 69 and Coin Locker Babies.  I’ve got to find time to read all of them.

The Tapestries by Kien Nguyen

December 23, 2008 in Asian Authors by CatThief | No comments

The Tapestries is inspired by the true story of Kien Nguyen’s grandfather, in the days of the last imperial court of Vietnam.  It is a drama laced with intrigue, brutality, murder and a beautiful love affair.  It’s setting is the slow moving time of Vietnamese village life and the rush to sophistication in the cities caused by the influence of the French.  The tapestries are the art works created by Nguyen’s grandfather as tapestry weaver to the imperial court. 

Dan Nguyen was born of nobility, saw his family murdered and was then sold as a slave into the house of the murderer, yet his amazing talent brings him to the imperial court.  Interwoven like a tapestry through these major moments of his life are the debt of revenge and honor that he owes to his family – that he must never forget.  It colors his life and all of his decisions.  It brings him terrible pain and great wisdom. 

This was a great book.  It held my interest, sparked my imagination and even made me think about patience, wisdom and honor.  Subjects that I don’t often keep at the top of my mind for detailed thought.  A book that makes me think and enjoy thinking is a book I recommend to everyone.  Read it.

Tapestries is Kien Nguyen’s first novel.  His second is Le Colonial, also a novel of Vietnamese history, which Authors Asia has already reviewed.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

December 3, 2008 in Asian Authors by CatThief | No comments

Modern day India, two women, one the servant from the slums, one the employer who lives in luxury.   Yet, despite their completely different cultures, they are in their own way devoted to each other.  They want the best and try to do the best for each other.  Bhima, the servant, is devoted to Sera Dubash and her family.  She keeps Sera’s most shameful secret.  Sera helps Bhima in problems where only power and influence can make a difference and pays for the education of her granddaughter.  Yet despite the closeness of these two women, despite the truth and commonality of problems in their lives, in the end blood is all.   They strike out to protect their families almost against their own will regardless of friendship.  This is a beautiful, honest book.  It touches so many places in our hearts and our societies that it has been a priviledge to read it.  It may take place in India, but in its own way, it takes place every day, everywhere. 

Thrity Umrigar, a journalist for seventeen years, has written for the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other national newspapers.  She is the author of the novel Bombay Time and the memoir First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood.  She was a winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and now teaches creative writing and literature at Case Western Reserve University.

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