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3 weeks ago | 
asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason
It's not every day one comes across a new novel about Jesus as a social activist, least of all one in translation from Malayalam. So Ministhy S's recent translation of renowned Indian writer Benyamin's 2007 novel, The Second Book of Prophets, is unexpected, to say the least. One need not know much about biblical stories or be religious-of any faith or none at all-to understand this story, although readers with some knowledge of the New Testament will be familiar with the characters and the plot.
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3 weeks ago | 
asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason
A midnight phone call can mean one of three things: a wrong number, a robocall or a terrible emergency. When suburban Bostonian, Claire Litvak receives a phone call from someone at the American consulate in Shanghai, it's of the third variety: her daughter Lindsey is in the hospital on life support after she was hit by a drunk driver.
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1 month 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.
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1 month 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.
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1 month 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.
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2 months 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.
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2 months 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.
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2 months ago | 
asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason
enowned poet and Hebrew translator of Greek drama, Aharon Shabtai, now 85, has a new collection, Requiem and Other Poems, translated by Peter Cole, that spans the early years of Israel to the days just after 7 October 2023. The book, although concise at just 87 pages, provides a vivid and comprehensive look at a writer who has spent his life promoting peace. The book is centered around an epic poem set from the end of the British Mandate to the early years of the State of Israel.
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Mar 14, 2025 | 
asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason
From the look of the cover design and the description, readers may think that Mizuki Tsujimura's novel Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon is yet another example of Japanese healing (or comfort) fiction. Most Japanese healing novels are slim with an inviting cover in soft pastels. The stories center around lost individuals who hope to find happiness in their unfulfilling lives. And they often make use of magical realism.
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Mar 10, 2025 | 
asianreviewofbooks.com | Susan Blumberg-Kason
Radha Vatsal specializes in mysteries set in World War I-era New York City. Her latest, No 10 Doyers Street, is set a decade before that in 1907 New York City when mayor George B McClellan had grand plans to build new parks and bring safe drinking water to residents of the city. One of these plans included bulldozing Chinatown so it could be turned into one of these planned parks.
