The Asian Books Blog Book of the Lunar Year

Asian Books Blog is launching its own literary award: The Asian Books Blog Book of the Lunar Year. The inaugural winner, for the Year of the Horse, now drawing to a close, will be announced on February 18, Chinese New Year’s Eve for the Year of the Ram / Goat.

As the name suggests, Asian Books Blog tries to highlight books of particular interest in, or especially relevant to, Asia, excluding the Near West / the Middle East.  The award thus likewise highlights such books. Authors can be of any nationality, and be published anywhere, either conventionally, or through self-publication – an important route for new voices within Asia, in countries with limited publishing industries.

Books are eligible if, during the given year, in this case the Year of the Horse, they featured in Asian Books Blog in any way except as part of the round-ups of new and notable titles, or in very short notices of one variety or another.

Bookmate Expands English Language Selection

Bookmate is a subscription based social e-reading service with offices in London, Moscow, and Singapore. With more than 1.5 million active users, and over 500,000 titles in nine languages, Bookmate brings together readers, authors, and publishers. Its social reading service is available across all mobile, tablet, and online platforms.  

The service has just announced the expansion of its English language eBook selection following a surge of deals with leading eBook publishers in the UK and the USA. Bookmate now offers more than 200,000 English language titles. Authors represented include Anthony Burgess, Alan Bennett, Mary Beard, David Peace, and C.S. Lewis.

Simon Dunlop, co-founder of Bookmate, commented: “English is the world’s most widely spoken language and a second language for many more people. Bookmate is strengthening its catalogue of English titles for these readers and these latest deals have brought many exciting authors to the service, continuing our trend of connecting readers with great books as we roll out to new markets this year.”

Bookmate is an open platform connecting publishers and readers directly. This means that authors listed on Bookmate can discover who is reading their books and access analytics to aid their own promotion and marketing efforts – authors in Asia take note! 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Asian Books Blog will now go quiet until January 17, when we'll announce the shortlist for the inaugural Asian Books Blog literary award, for the lunar new year now coming to an end - the year of the horse. 

If you want more information about the award, click here.

Here's wishing you the happiest of happy reading in 2015! 

Bangkok Women’s Writers Group

Bangkok Women’s Writers Group (BWWG) have just published their second anthology of short fiction, Monsoon Midnights. Raelee Chapman spoke to the group’s organiser, Anette Pollner

Anette arrived in Bangkok in 2003 on a round-the-world ticket.  At the time, she was writing a novel.  When she left two years later, she was writing a different novel; since she returned in 2006 she has finished five more, and has seen most of them published in the UK and the US.  She also writes short stories and articles. Furthermore, she created a successful series of unconventional creative writing workshops, Writing from the Unconscious Mind; she has just launched a new series of workshops, Creative Writing for Startups.

Could you tell me a bit about Monsoon Midnights?

The anthology contains 18 short stories which previously appeared as part of a monthly series in The Big Chilli, a local English-language magazine. The stories explore strange and wonderful locations in Bangkok, all set at night, under the monsoon moon.  They are connected by short segments written by me. Each story is illustrated by artwork from Thai artists, and we included a map of Bangkok, to show where each story is set.   

500 Words From KH Lim

500 Words From...is a series of guest posts from authors, in which they talk about their recently published books and characters. Here Bruneian KH Lim discusses his debut novel, Written in Black, which is set in his home country.

A darkly humorous coming-of-age novel, Written in Black offers a snapshot of a few days in the life of a troubled 10-year-old, Jonathan Lee, who absconds from his grandfather’s wake in an empty coffin. He then embarks on a journey across Brunei.  His travels bring him into contact with poklans – Bruneian teenage delinquents – weird shopkeepers, and the inhabitants of cursed houses.  Along the way, he discovers adventure, courage, friendship - and, eventually, himself.

So: over to KH Lim…

“Written in Black is about a boy from a broken family, who escapes his grandfather's funeral to find his runaway elder brother. Why? Because only his brother might know the truth about why their mother left the country six months ago. If all that sounds too optimistic for you, I forgot to add that he also gets regularly picked on by an unsympathetic and rather volatile father. Hopefully he'll make it through alright in the end, but definitely not unchanged…

This Week in Asian Review of Books

Asian Books Blog is not a review site.  For reviews see Asian Review of Books. Here is a round-up of their latest reviews:

Canyon in the Body, poems by Lan Lan, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain reviewed by John W. W. Zeiser
Deng Xiaoping: The Man Who Made Modern China by Michael Dillon reviewed by Kerry Brown
New from the Asian Review of Books: China 2014: The Year in Books
I Ching: The Essential Translation of the Ancient Chinese Oracle and Book of Wisdom, translated by John Minford reviewed by Jonathan Chatwin

Questions & Answers: M.J. Carter

M.J. Carter is the author of The Strangler Vine, a wonderfully enjoyable historical thriller, set in the 1830s, in India.  The novel introduces Blake and Avery, an investigative pair with hints of Sherlock and Watson – solid, dependable Avery is the sidekick to brilliant, but troubled, Blake.  They are both employees of The East India Company. When their employers ask them to track down a missing poet, Xavier Mountstuart, they are forced to confront the Thugs, who roam around strangling their victims…or do they? Perhaps Company man, Major William Sleeman, is exaggerating their depravity?  Perhaps Thugs are little more than vagabonds, and pawns in The Company’s power games?   It’s a great book, and I urge you to read it.  In the meantime, M.J. Carter answers a few questions.

In the endnotes, you call yourself a neophyte when it comes to India and its history, but you also mention your mother-in-law lived for many years in Madras / Chennai.  How important, if at all, was this family connection?  How come you decided to write about colonial India?

It was very important. My mother-in-law was the reason I heard about the Thugs and William Sleeman in the first place. I’d never have thought about writing about India if it hadn’t been for her. She was rather an amazing woman and was a nun in Chennai running the teacher training college there in the 1950s before she decided to renounce her vows. In fact my husband wrote a memoir about her, Family Romance, by John Lanchester. Her stories about the Thugs were the starting point, but what really got me interested was the fact that there was a fierce debate about whether the Thugs had existed or whether they were a convenient British fabrication, or myth. That gave me my story.