Wrapped up in a class and expat bubble
The novel is set in 2019 Hong Kong at the time of the protests, but if you are a reader who is hoping for a lot of political discussion and staging, this may not be the novel for you. Hong...
The novel is set in 2019 Hong Kong at the time of the protests, but if you are a reader who is hoping for a lot of political discussion and staging, this may not be the novel for you. Hong...
It is always a pleasure to open a book by an accomplished, confident author, and Zadie Smith is one of those. Her first novel White Teeth was a rollicking tale about a Bangladeshi immigrant and his English friend, and her...
There are many books written about the relationship between white mistresses and black slaves, and this too is one such, but there is an added angle with the book addressing both racism and sexism almost equally – that the white...
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...
This is a novel which is as comforting to read as having a mug of hot tea and a chocolate digestive biscuit on a rainy day. In an age where so many novels are edgy, disquieting, challenging, clever, deliberately discomfiting,...
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...
As soon as I realised an octopus was a narrator of this novel, I simply had to read it. However, it needs to be noted that the octopus is only one of several narrators, and has the least amount of...
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...
Angie Kim’s second novel, after her first, Miracle Creek, follows much the same format, style, and even texture, as her first. This is not a criticism, however, because both novels are well done, well written, well planned. Her second, Happiness Falls,...
The blurb intrigued me, being the story of 3 Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, part of the almost 40% strong migrant workforce in Singapore. Angel, Cora, and Donita become friends, and we are give their very different backgrounds and stories,...
When I was 30, a well-intentioned, non-Indian adult suggested I write a letter to my mother, let her know how she had made me feel for decades – get it all out. I smiled and said, Indian daughters don’t do...
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,...
Amusingly, Kuang feels the need to begin this 540+ page novel with an author’s note on her representation of Oxford university. Accurately, she says, The trouble with writing an Oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at Oxford...
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...
I have read a couple of other Erdrich novels, and so far, this one was the most accessible to me. Not that any of the others were less well written, but this one made access easiest for the non-initiated American...
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