Susan Blumberg-Kason

3 weeks ago | asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason

TS Eliot concludes his 1922 poem, "The Waste Land", with three words: Shantih Shantih Shantih. This Sanskrit term for peace is the title of Daryl Qilin Yam's novella that centers around the implausible idea of a quick snowfall in Singapore in the middle of the night when most people are still asleep. Yam weaves twelve interrelated stories around this snowfall, bringing together a dozen characters from various backgrounds who all find themselves awake at four in the morning.

3 weeks ago | asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason

he increasing number of memoirs and novels set in China over the past couple of decades fall into two broad buckets. A handful of Americans taught English in China and returned to write memoirs around the same time as Chinese immigrants to the US and UK began to find success as fiction writers, both in English and in translation.

4 weeks ago | asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason

Amrita Sher-Gil was an early 20th-century Hungarian Jewish-Indian painter, one of the most celebrated women artists in India of the time. Her father was a Sikh aristocrat and her mother a professional opera singer. She started painting in the western tradition, influenced by the likes of Cezanne and Gauguin, and became known for her paintings of Indian villagers. Sher-Gil died at the young age of twenty-eight, supposedly from a botched abortion.

1 month ago | asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason

Nine year-old Mira is always on the verge of getting into hot water. When she tries to stay underwater in a swimming pool for as long as possible, her mother Leela panics and fears she's drowning. When Mira's teenaged brother Ashu and his best friend Rahul smoke and drink in a secret hiding place, Mira sometimes lurks nearby. And when Leela dates a swimming instructor from their club, Mira learns the true intentions of "Coach" long before her mother does.

1 month ago | asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason

As Merle Oberon starred in four dozen films during the golden age of Hollywood, she kept a secret that could have immediately destroyed her career: she was biracial and was born and raised in India. While no longer a secret, her story has all but been forgotten. Mayukh Sen's new biography of Oberon, Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star, the first in decades, uniquely delves into her family's background going back to Bombay and Calcutta, where she was born and grew up.