Shreya Sen-Handley Talks the Strange and Unexpected in her Short Stories with Elaine Chiew

Credit Stephen Handley

Bio: Former television journalist and producer Shreya Sen-Handley is the author of two books with HarperCollins, the recently published short story collection Strange and the award-winning Memoirs of My Body. She is also a columnist for the international media, writing for the National Geographic, CNN and The Guardian amongst others, a creative writing teacher, illustrator, and a librettist for the Welsh National Opera. She is currently writing her third book for HarperCollins, The Accidental Tourist, a travelogue, alongside her monthly column for top Indian newspapers, the Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle. The opera she has co-written, ‘Migrations’, will tour the UK in 2021. 

EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Shreya. Congratulations on your short story collection, Strange (HarperCollins India, 2019). How long was it in the making, and tell us what your short story collection is about. 

SSH: Thank you Elaine. “What’s your next book?” asked my editors at HarperCollins the minute my first book ‘Memoirs of My Body’ was published in 2017. I said I was considering writing more short stories. I had written a handful in the 3 years my first book, Memoirs of My Body, had been brewing and each had gone on to be published, broadcast or shortlisted in competitions in Australia, UK and India, and thought readers might want a few more. I certainly enjoyed writing them and was eager to write more. My editors loved the idea, and noticed something I hadn’t really consciously wrought- an unexpected turn to most of my stories, and so this collection of ‘profoundly unsettling and unusual’ short stories was conceived. There were in the end, appropriately, 13 stories in all, and they covered a variety of genres – romance, comedy, science fiction, dystopia, horror, supernatural, crime, etc. There was no attempt to write on the same subject every time, or restrict myself to a genre. Instead the idea was to focus on the unexpected in every aspect of our everyday lives, and uncover, as a result, the strangeness that lies beneath the seemingly ordinary. 

Courtesy HarpeCollins India

Bookworm

Countries across the globe are currently enforcing various types of social restrictions to help reduce the infection rate of Covid-19. Under these bizarre circumstances, it is easy to feel distant and isolated from friends and family. Perhaps more than ever before, this is a time when it is important to celebrate community.

With this in mind, Asian Books Blog has decided to launch a new series entitled Bookworm. We will be interviewing different members of the Asian-books-loving community to delve deeply into their relationships with Asian literature. We hope that hearing from our Bookworms will help strengthen the sense of shared passion amongst our readers and will also provide inspiration for taking on new literary challenges. We aim to interview a diverse group of people, spanning all different sorts of identities, and living all over the world.

Shelley Herman works on data analysis in the defence industry, and currently lives on the Eastern Coast of the US, in New Jersey. She is our very first Bookworm!

Canadian Chinese Author Alice Poon Brings Tales of Courtesans Alive: Bookish Chat with Elaine Chiew

Courtesy of the Author

Bio:

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Alice Poon steeped herself in Chinese poetry and history, Jin Yong’s martial arts novels and English Literature in her school days. This early immersion has inspired her creative writing. 

Always fascinated with iconic but unsung women in Chinese history and legends, she cherishes a dream of bringing them to the page.

She is the author of The Green Phoenix and the bestselling and award-winning non-fiction title Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong. She now lives in Vancouver, Canada and devotes her time to writing historical Chinese fiction.

Synopsis:

From the author of The Green Phoenix comes a riveting tale of female friendship, honor, and sacrifice for love, set in 17th Century China and featuring the intertwined stories of three of the era’s most renowned courtesans – Liu Rushi, Chen Yuanyuan and Li Xiangjun. Inspired by literary works and folklore, Tales of Ming Courtesans traces the destinies of the three girls from the seamy world of human trafficking and slavery to the cultured scene of the famously decadent pleasure district of the city of Nanjing, evoking episodes in Memoirs of a Geisha.

In 1664, Jingjing is reading her mother Rushi's memoir. A wretched adolescence barely behind her, Rushi buys her way out of bondage but, being a courtesan, loses her true love to the tyranny of conventions. Social scorn never leaves her alone. The memoir inspires Jingjing to uncover the fates of Rushi's two sworn sisters, also courtesans. Yuanyuan is first trapped in brutal slavery and then forced to let go of her lover and enter an unhappy union with a brutish general. Xiangjun incurs corrupt courtiers' wrath when she warns her lover of their trap laid for him. Thrown into each other’s company, the three women forge a strong bond that becomes their lifeline. When the outbreak of war plunges them into deeper woes, they mull over a daring idea. In piecing the three sisters' stories together, Jingjing slowly unravels the secret of who she really is.

Betrayal, tenacity and hope all come together in a novel that brings to life an important era in China’s history, and particularly highlights the challenges faced by independent-minded women.

Tsundoku #10 - June 2020

A world cautiously restarting in many ways - bookshops adapting and reopening, online sales booming as people still read. We do hope so. Time to build that summer tsundoku now...this month the non-fiction seems to be outweighing the fiction in terms of new Asia-themed books, but we'll start with a couple of novels...

Golden Kamuy Volumes 1-5 - A Shonen Manga of Adventure and History

Golden Kamuy by Satoru Noda is a shonen manga series that covers a wide range of genres – adventure, war, political intrigue, comedy, and thrillers. Set shortly after the Russo-Japanese War (1904 – 1905) it follows Saichi Sugimoto, a veteran of the conflict, and his quest for a legendary stash of gold hidden in Hokkaido, the most northern of Japan’s main islands. While fighting at the vicious Battle of Port Arthur, he earned the nickname “Immortal Sugimoto,” given his almost legendary ability to avoid death, which he keeps throughout the remainder of this series.

Building a House in a Moving World, guest post from Theophilus Kwek

Theophilus Kwek has published five volumes of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His pamphlet, The First Five Storms, won the New Poets’ Prize in 2016 and was also shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award in 2017. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine and elsewhere; he has also written on issues of migration and citizenship for The Straits Times, South China Morning Post, and Singapore Policy Journal. He has edited several books of Singapore writing, and serves as editor of Oxford Poetry.

Moving House is a collection of border-crossing poems that make their way from episodes in Southeast Asia’s colonial history, to scenes of displacement and difference in contemporary Britain and Singapore. Drawing on the author’s personal and family histories, it lands on the bigger question of what it means to feel at home in a mobile and deeply unsettled world.

Short story writer Janet H Swinney Chats With Elaine Chiew

Credit: Janet H Swinney; Design: Kay Green

Bio:  Janet H Swinney is a former education inspector who grew up in the North East of England, got her political education in Scotland and now lives in London. She has longstanding connections with India that have deeply influenced her writing. Her work has appeared in print anthologies and online journals across the UK, India and America, and has been listed in many competitions. Her story ‘The Map of Bihar’ was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose 2012. She was a runner-up for the London Short Story Prize 2014. She has written features articles for the UK press including the Guardian and the Times. 

Synopsis: The Map of Bihar is a collection of stories about yearning; about aspiration thwarted and fulfilled. Faced with the constraints of culture, caste, class, poverty and the complexities of modern-day life, individuals from opposite sides of the globe strive for something better. Their ambition takes many forms. While some reach out towards a distant vision of fulfilment, the best that others can hope for is simply to survive. And while some turn out to be adept at grabbing opportunities, others are not so fortunate. Between them, they display resourcefulness, resilience, vulnerability and, sometimes, a pungent sense of humour. 

EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Janet. Congratulations on The Map of Bihar, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. The short stories take place primarily in India and the northeast of England.  Why these two locations?

JHS: Thanks for inviting me, Elaine. I was born and grew up in a village in the North East of England. I couldn’t wait to get away from the place. It was a very close-knit community, where everybody knew what you were up to, and was very keen to tell you not to do it. It wasn’t until I had to go back many years later that I realised the strengths of that community, even though much had happened politically and economically in the intervening years to undermine them.   I was brought up as a Christian, but I thought the teachings were flawed. When I was a teenager, I started casting around for something else. I became interested in Indian philosophy, and I started practising yoga. I wanted to go to India to find a guru. But for a young woman with no money and no worldly wisdom, that was a complete impossibility.

Then, in 1973, I was at Leeds University ostensibly studying for a teaching qualification, but in reality doing everything to avoid it, and met the composer, Naresh Sohal. Our interests in yoga philosophy and music drew us together and that was the start of a relationship that lasted until he died in 2018, forty-five years later. Naresh gave me an extensive drubbing about the shortcomings of the British Raj, which I had to concede was justified. Over the time we were together, we visited India frequently, staying with his family in Punjab and exploring many other parts of the country.