JoV's Book Pyramid
Prize Winner
Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin
If you are an Far Eastern Asian in your mid 40’s you are likely to have a mother which is less literate, who may have gone through many years of sacrifice bringing up her children, very superstitious and may practice ancestral rites to wade off evil so as not to incur God’s wrath on the … Continue reading
Annabel by Kathleen Winter
‘Nothing I do with Economics is going to change what I am’ – Wayne (page 352) In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote Croydon Harbour, a coastal village in Labrador in the far north-east of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy or girl, but … Continue reading
When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
I first came across this book at Vishy’s Blog and when I saw Granta 2011 edition of the book sitting on the featured library shelf, I borrowed it without second thought. Set in Israel April 1946 – then British-controlled Palestine – just after the Second World War, the novel follows a young Englishwoman Evelyn Sert, … Continue reading
In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance
On a white-hot day in Tripoli, Libyra, in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business – but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses. but why isn’t he waving? and … Continue reading
As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong
It is a book by a New Zealand Author,… No, let me do this again, it is the book cover that attracts my attention when it was displayed in the library shelf. 🙂 A good cover does attracts, but it is not a be all or end all for me. I do base my quick … Continue reading
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
‘I’m writing a history of the world… And in the process, my own’. Claudia Hampton is an ex-war correspondent, currently a popular historian on her deathbed in a London hospital. She is old, ill and lying in hospital, gently condescended to by the nurse at her bedside. She reviews her life as a paradigm of … Continue reading
Man Asia Literary Prize Winner 2010 Announced
On the 17th March, the winner of the the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize 2011 was announced. The winner is Chinese Author Bi Feiyu, for his published first novel “The Three Sisters”. Bi Feiyu almost didn’t attend the awards ceremony Thursday. “When I was on the shortlist,” Mr. Bi said last night when he accepted … Continue reading
I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti
In 1966, the Palestine poet Mourid Barghouti, then 22, left home to return to university in Cairo. Then came the Six-Day War in Palestine and Barghouti, like many young Palestinians abroad, was denied entry into Palestine. 30 years later, with the Oslo Agreement, the Palestinian refugees and exiles may apply for the right to return … Continue reading
Man Asian Literary Prize Shortlist 2010 is out!
The five books shortlisted for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize have been announced in Hong Kong. Before that, let me digress and say a BIG, and HUGE thank you for everyone out there who has shown such kindness and support while I am adjusting to my new job. Please believe me when I say … Continue reading
The Maid by Yasutaka TsuTsui
The Maid by Tsutsui Yasutaka and translated by Adam Kabat was beckoning to me where it sat pretty and new in the library shelf. Unknown to me at first glance, The Maid (家族八景, or Kazoku Hakkei also titled What the Maid Saw) was originally written in 1972. I tried to read the book in the … Continue reading
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Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
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