Financial Times / Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Award, 2015

The longlist has just been announced for the inaugural Financial Times / Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Award, which aims to recognise extraordinary artistic talent in three categories – fiction, film-making, and art across more than 100 emerging market nations.

This Week in Asian Review of Books

See the Asian Review of Books for ever-interesting discussion. Here is a list of its newest reviews, excerpts, essays, and round ups:

Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army by Phyllis Birnbaum reviewed by Stephen Joyce
Hunters in the Dark by Lawrence Osborne reviewed byTim Hannigan
Beatson’s Mutiny: The Turbulent Career of a Victorian Soldier by Richard Stevenson reviewed by Nigel Collett
The Tusk That Did The Damage by Tania James reviewed by Agnes Bun

Q & A: Jemimah Steinfeld

Asia House, in London, is a non-profit, non-political organisation that promotes the exchange of ideas between the diverse communities of Europe and Asia. Each May it hosts The Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival which features some of the best in literature with specifically Asian interest. For the first time this year Jemimah Steinfeld was Festival Manager – she is also the author of Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China.  I asked her to reflect on this year’s recently-concluded Festival.

This Week in Asian Review of Books

Asian Books Blog is not a review site. If you want reviews, see the Asian Review of Books. Here is a list of its newest reviews, excerpts, essays, bibliographies, and round ups:

The Last Unicorn: A Search for One of Earth’s Rarest Creatures by William de Buys reviewed by Jame DiBasio
Outside reading: links to essays on Eileen Chang, Laszlo Krasznahorkai and agenting in China 
Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang reviewed by Jill Baker
India and its history: a bibliography 
Japan and the Shackles of the Past by R Taggart Murphy reviewed by Glyn Ford

The Sunday Post

A rojak* of items that caught my eye this week…

Sonny Liew: update

As discussed in the previous post, I recently met Edmund Wee, at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content. Edmund’s company, Epigram is graphic-novelist Sonny Liew’s Singapore publisher.  As reported last week, the government here recently withdrew a grant of SGD 8,000 for Sonny’s latest offering, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, over objections to the content. Edmund told me that as a result of the controversy, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye has become Epigram’s fastest selling book ever, and that the first print-run sold out in a week. He is now reprinting.

Quick Notice: Nine Cuts, short stories by Audrey Chin

Singaporean author Audrey Chin’s latest anthology includes stories about: the beating heart of a cannibal picking up a ghoul at a local market in the City-State; a Vietnamese–American grieving in Alaska; a sister’s love for her brother, and his dragon fish; a wealthy teenager coming to grips with her Catholic grandfather’s legacy...and much more. Using a cookery analogy, Audrey says the collection offers: “Poignant slices of heart - tender, done and spoiled.” 

Nine Cuts is to be published in paperback, by Singaporean publishing house, Math Paper Press, which focusses on poetry, new wave novellas, full-length novels, and essays. Final proofs are about to be sent to the printers, but here is a sneak peak of the cover.

Taslima Nasreen

Following the spate of murders of bloggers in Bangladesh, the outspoken secularist Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has moved to the US from India, where she'd been living in exile. She felt she was not safe in India, since she’d been getting death threats from the same Muslim extremists who killed the bloggers. Lend your support by following her on Twitter, here.

Blog Spot

Do you run a blog you think may be of interest to readers of Asian Books Blog?  If so, get in touch, preferably via e-mail - asianbooksblog@gmail.com - because I want to include a weekly blog spot in The Sunday Post. The idea is to invite administrators of relevant and interesting-sounding blogs to write a paragraph about their blog, to be posted in the blog spot.

Seen Elsewhere

Malaysian pulp fiction has been attracting a lot of attention. Click here for a report from The New York Times, and here, for coverage from Publishing Perspectives.

*A rojak is a Singaporean salad. Like Asian Books Blog on Facebook, or follow it on Twitter: @asianbooksblog

Lion City Lit: Edmund Wee, Epigram Books

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Lion City Lit explores what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise.  This month, I meet Edmund Wee, the founder, publisher, and CEO of Epigram Books, one of Singapore’s largest general trade publishing houses.

500 Words From Melissa de Villiers

500 Words From...is a series of guest posts from authors, in which they talk about their recently published books. Here, Melissa de Villiers, a South African expat now living in Singapore, discusses The Chameleon House, her newly published collection of short stories set in post-apartheid South Africa, London and Singapore. The Chameleon House has been longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2015.

So, over to Melissa…