20 Books Yellowface


by Rebecca F Kuang, The Borough Press, ISBN 9780008532819, £8.49


Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. However, as evidence threatens June’s


stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.


reeling from its effects, two sisters – born to the same father but different mothers – struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father’s first child – haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together – seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances. And both sisters find themselves unable to outrun the legacies of their late mothers.


What You Are Looking For is the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts, Doubleday, ISBN 9780857529121, £9.99


What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they’re looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.


Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan, HarperVoyager, ISBN 9780008479381, £9


Inspired by the legend of Chang’e the Moon Goddess, this is the sequel to Daughter of the Moon Goddess, the second book in the Celestial Kingdom Duology. After winning her mother’s freedom from the Emperor, Xingyin lives peacefully at home on the moon. But that fragile peace is threatened by a strange new magic – Xingyin is determined to keep clear of danger, but the discovery of a shocking truth forces her to flee her home once more. Tan weaves Chinese mythology into an adventure of love and family, immortals and magic.


Whale


by Chun Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim, Europa Editions, ISBN 9781787704336, £14.99


A woman sells her daughter to a passing beekeeper for two jars of honey. A baby weighing 15 pounds is born in the depths of winter but named ‘Girl of Spring’. A storm brings down the roof of a ramshackle restaurant to reveal a hidden fortune. Tese are just some of the events that set Myeong- Kwan’s beautifully crafted, wild world in motion. Set in a remote village in Sout Korea, Whale follows the lives of its linked characters: Geumbok, who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle.


Saha


by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chan, Scribner, ISBN 9781398510029


In a country called ‘Town’, Su is found dead in an abandoned car. Te suspected killer is presumed to


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come from the Saha Estates.Town is a privatised country, controlled by a secretive organisation known as the Seven Premiers. It is a society clearly divided into the haves and have-nots and those who have the very least live on the Saha Estates. Among their number is Jin-Kyung, a young woman whose brother, Dok-yung, was in a relationship with Su and quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. When Dok-yung disappears, Jin Ky-ung is determined to get to the bottom of things. On her quest to find the truth, though, she will uncover a reality far darker and crimes far greater than she could ever have imagined. At once a dystopian mystery and devastating critique of how we live now, Saha lifts the lid on corruption, exploitation and government oppression, while, with deep humanity and compassion, showing us the lives of those who, through no fault of their own, suffer at the hand of brutal forces far beyond their control.


Violets


by Kyung-sook Shin, translated by Anton Hur, W&N, ISBN 9781474623568, £9.99


San is a lonely child in the South Korea of 1970, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path. We next meet San, aged twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul’s bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San is introduced to a curious cast of characters – the mute shop owner, a brash co-worker, kind farmers and aggressive customers – and fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer. Troughout it all, San’s moment with Namae continues to linger in the back of her mind.


Victory City


by Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Cape, ISBN 9781787333444, £18


In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in 14th-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a


Savage Beasts by Rani Selvarajah, One More Chapter, ISBN 9780008556280, £8.99


Tis novel takes place in 1757, when Bengal s on the brink of war. Te East India Company, led by Sir Peter Chilcott, are advancing and nobody is safe. Meena, the Nawab’s neglected daughter, finds herself falling under the spell of James Chilcott, nephew of Sir Peter, who claims he wants to betray the company


– for a price. Caught between friend and foe, Meena and James escape Calcutta, their hands stained in blood and pockets filled with gold. In Ceylon, they are cleansed of their sins by Meena’s aunt Kiran, before the overs set sail for the Dutch controlled Cape of Good Hope, with the promise of a new life. Yet past resentments and present betrayals begin to pile up as they struggle to overcome their differences. And as Meena yet again finds herself in a foreign land without anyone to turn to, she is forced to find out what she is willing to sacrifice when love turns to hate.


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divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga – literally ‘victory city’ – the wonder of the world. Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and as years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, Bisnaga is no exception.


Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781399707602, £14.95


In the fourth thriller in the Malabar House series, Persis and Archie travel to Calcutta, where they collide head-on with the prejudices and bloody politics of an era engulfed in flame. James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father forces a new investigation into the killing. Te investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American GI during the Calcutta Killings of 1946.


Fear and Lovely


by Anjana Appachana, Verve Books, ISBN 9780857308320, £10.95


Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a close-knit, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Tough she is surrounded by love, her life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother and her aunt work hard to keep.After suffering a trauma aged nineteen, Mallika loses three days of her memory and slowly spirals into a deep depression. She must find a way out of this abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community. In a narrative that unfolds elliptically from the perspectives of Mallika and the seven people closest to her, the astonishing story of these characters’ lives emerges. For Mallika’s family, childhood friends and the two men she loves are also hiding truths. As each gives voice to contending with their own struggles, secrets and silences shatter.


Exploring the


similarities and differences in views of the after life


Miscellaneous


Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds edited by Adriana Prosner, Officina Libraria, ISBN 9788833671055, £55


Hell has been embodied and portrayed in terrifying, bizarre, and occasionally humorous incarnations across religions and cultures for millennia. Whether considered as places of eternal or finite punishment, underworlds provide a rich setting for a potent cast of characters that have caught the imaginations of artists and patrons who have shaped the visual cultures of Asia’s systems of belief, particularly Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam. Trough masterpieces from West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the diaspora, paired with essays from renowned scholars, this catalogue, which accompanied the exhibition at Asia Society New York, explores both differences and similarities in conceptions of the afterlife and artistic practices from religion to religion and culture to culture. Tis journey through judgment, punishment, and even the promise of salvation sheds light on the fundamental questions of life, death, and existence.


Borrowed Landscapes:


China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland by Emile de Bruijn, Philip Wilson Publishers, ISBN 9781781300985, £35


Te European passion for Chinese and Japanese art and ornament has had a profound impact in the British Isles since the seventeenth century, and nowhere is this more evident than in the houses and gardens of the National Trust. Chinese and Japanese influences on country- house décor and garden design began with luxury imports, carefully tailored to Western fantasies and expectations. Domestic designers and artisans soon added their own fanciful interpretations of ‘oriental’ art to the mix, traditionally known as chinoiserie and japonisme.


Italy by Way of India: Translating Art and Devotion in the Early Modern World by Erin Benay, Brepols, ISBN 9781912554775, Euro 100


Te return of a saint’s body to its rightful resting place was an event of civic and spiritual significance retold in Medieval sources and substantiated by artistic commissions. Legends of Saint Tomas Apostle, for instance, claimed that the martyred saint had been miraculously transported from India to Italy during the 13th century. However, Saint Tomas’s purported resting place in Ortona, Italy did not become a major stopping point on pilgrimage or exploration routes, nor did this event punctuate frescoed life cycles or become a subject for Renaissance altarpieces as one would expect. Instead, the site of the apostle’s


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burial in Chennai, India has flourished as a terminus of religious pilgrimage, where a multifaceted visual tradition emerged, and where a vibrant local cult of ‘Tomas Christians’ remains to this day. An unlikely destination on the edge of the ‘known’ world thus became a surprising source of early modern Christian piety. By studying the art and texts associated with this little-known cult, this book disrupts assumptions about how knowledge of Asia took shape during the Renaissance and challenges art historical paradigms in which art was crafted by locals merely to be exported, collected, and consumed by curious European patrons. In so doing, the book proposes that we redefine the parameters of early modern visual culture to account for the ways that global mobility and the circulation of objects profoundly influence how cultures see and know each other as well as themselves.


Gold and Silver Damascus:


The Ghiringhelli Arms and Armour Collection by Vanna Ghiringhelli and Marco Briccola, Tralerighe , ISBN 9788899575458, Euro 45


Tis is a catalogue raisone of a private Italian collection. Te author, Vanna Ghiringhelli says, ‘Having these weapons at home, on our walls, in front of our eyes, was like seeing concretely everything my late husband Mario and I had studied, like reliving our adventurous journeys through Asia’. Te book is this record of a journey ‘on a knife’s edge’ that starts in Persia and ends in the Philippines, passing through the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. It also includes a survey of the Wayang characters in the weapons of Indonesia and chapters on Javanese master blade makers, and measuring the blades of kris. Other chapters include the Dayaks in Borneo and Tibetan symbolic objects.


The Museum of Other People:


From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions by Adam Kuper, Profile Books, ISBN 9781800810914, £25


Tis is a history of the ways in which foreign and prehistoric peoples were represented in museums of anthropology, with their displays of arts and artifacts, their dioramas, their special exhibitions, and their arrays of skulls and skeletons. Originally created as colonial enterprises, what is the purpose of these places today? What should they do with the items in their custodianship? And how can they help us to understand and appreciate other cultures? Informed by a lifetime of research and scholarship, this subtle and original work tackles painful questions about race, colonialism, difference, and cultural appropriation. Te result is a must-read for anyone concerned with the coexistence of different modes of life.


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