Frank McCourt had been telling his stories for decades in New York bars before he wrote his first book. I imagine that his audience always egged him on, because McCourt is a natural raconteur. Born in America and brought up...
Historical fiction can be tricky. On the one hand, the author needs to aim for historical accuracy, including the less appealing social and cultural aspects of the time. On the other hand, the author might not want to associate himself...
That quintessentially American icon, the suburban shopping mall, is at the center of this quiet and pleasing debut novel. This particular mall, in a small town in Pennsylvania, is dying, and only a few shops are still open, with the...
Among the flurry of novels set in Nigeria of late is The Nigerwife. It stands out because the author is neither Nigerian nor Caucasian, but is a Black English writer, Vanessa Walter. Based on her own experience living in Lagos,...
The myth of the model minority has bedeviled Asian-Americans for decades: they are supposed to be the high achievers who bootstrapped themselves through American society, and are held up as role models for other immigrant groups. Prachi Gupta’s family seemed...
This review was first published in Parabaas, and is reproduced here with permission. A memoir with a conspicuously literary slant is Buddhadeva Bose’s The Land Where I Found it All. Translated from Bengali to English by Nandini Gupta, the translator...
Let me tell you about dark men with white smiles, these Tamil men I loved and who belonged with me. In my house there were four of them. Each of my brothers resembled my father in a different way. All...
Set as it is in an upscale American suburb and focusing on the few nonwhite residents, this first novel may remind readers of Celeste Ng’s Little Flowers Everywhere, but to my mind, Vibhuti Jain’s Our Best Intentions tackles a complex...
Amy Chua burst into popular public consciousness with her third book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An memoir about her strict Chinese-parenting approach, the book was both wildly entertaining and wildly controversial. Her next book also created controversy:...
This memoir starts with an arresting line: The year was 1402, and the summer air in the city of Fez was warm and dusty. I walked through the alley that led from the vizier’s palace to the market overflowing with...
Readers who grew up in America and loved Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (described by Edward Albee as “the greatest American play ever written”) will probably love Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Tom Lake. Our Town appears both explicitly and implicitly in...
Kirthana Ramisetti’s first novel was unusual, even if it didn’t live up to its initial promise. I picked up her second at the library, in the hope that the author had developed beyond the flaws of the first. Advika and...
The title of The Shanghai Free Taxi refers to a rather charming and novel way to meet people, but the author intends it to be quite a bit more: a snapshot of modern China. Frank Langfitt had driven a taxi...
‘The Talk’ usually means a discussion about sex and reproduction that parents are supposed to have with their children at some point. For black kids, though, ‘The Talk’ has a much heavier meaning: the discussion of racism and implicit bias,...
Singapore, the tiny island-nation with famously impeccable streets, not a leaf out of place and constantly updated infrastructure, all maintained by a population of foreign workers who form about a quarter of the population. Beyond the people who clean the...
Shipboard noir
Sensitive portrayal of a class divide
Italian Introspection
Boiler plate sexism
Family Dynamics
The sensation-laden internal life of a young teen
How strange a world that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality
“Elegies and epitaphs, but also signs and wonders”
“Champor-champor” culture
‘Omo britico’ (British Girl)
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