Sunday, 5 April 2015
The Hindu Prize / Submissions
The Hindu Prize shines a light on the best Indian fiction in English every year. It is run by The Hindu newspaper, which now invites submissions from publishers for the 2015 prize. Self-published titles are not eligible. See here for details.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Q & A: Rena Pederson / The Burma Spring
The Burma
Spring,
by award-winning journalist and former US
State Department speechwriter Rena Pederson, is a biography
of Aung San Suu Kyi. It offers a
portrait of the woman herself, and also portraits of Burma, and of the Burmese
people. (Burma was renamed Myanmar by the military government, but since this was not
democratically elected, Western policy has often been to refer to the country
as Burma. Rena adopts this policy too.)
Quick Notice / The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith
About the Book
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker
with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful
wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye,
seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted
by grotesque recurring nightmares.
Quick Notice / A Kim Jong-Il Production, by Paul Fischer
About the Book
We’ve all heard the phrase the truth is stranger than fiction. Never has that been truer than in the real
life story that unfolds in Paul Fischer’s A
Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His
Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power.
This Week in Asian Review of Books
Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life by Jie Li reviewed by SY Koh
Green Shoots Under Soot-Stained Skies by Mark L. Clifford (excerpt)
Ouside reading: essays on Asian writing selected by the ARB editorial team
Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand reviewed by Nigel Collett
Saturday, 28 March 2015
Irrawaddy Literary Festival Starts Today
Check out the website here.
Check out the Facebook page here.
If you happen to be visiting the Festival, and you'd like to write about it for the blog, then let me know! (Email: asianbooksblog@gmail.com)
Thursday, 26 March 2015
Guest Post: Dominique Wilson / Researching The Yellow Papers
Dominique
Wilson is an Australian historical novelist. She here gives an
in-depth account of how she researched her novel The Yellow Papers, and also offers advice to
others on how to research historical novels set, or partly set, in Asia.
The story
The Yellow Papers is a novel set between Australia and China, from just after the
two Opium Wars to the time of the Cultural Revolution. It is a story of love,
obsession and friendship set against a backdrop of war and racial
prejudice.
It begins in 1872 when China – still bruised from its defeat in the two Opium Wars – sends a group of boys, including seven-year-old Chen Mu, to America to study and bring back the secrets of the West. But nine years on Chen Mu becomes a fugitive and flees to Umberumberka, a mining town in outback Australia. He eventually finds peace working for Matthew Dawson, a rich pastoralist.
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