by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 17, 2022 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner is about a gentle girl in a brutal country. While the book is fictional, its roots exist in the author’s own life. This enhances the intimacy of the tale. Young Raami is only seven when civil war overwhelms Cambodia. As a...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 19, 2021 | RESIST: Politics
Wendy Pearlman gathers an oral history in We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria. This focuses on the time period around Arab Spring when in 2011 the Syrian people rose up and protested. As a result, many individuals and families suffered greatly. And...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 12, 2021 | RESIST: Politics
Hyeonseo Lee tells her harrowing story in The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story. Growing up in the Northern region of her country, the Chinese border was quite close. Her mother had connections there, and her father had some family. One day, Lee...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 27, 2021 | RELAX: Memoir, RESIST: Politics
Azedah Moaveni writes part memoir and part political discussion in her 2005 book, Lipstick Jihad: Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran. Although the events in this book are over 20 years old, as I read it in 2021 the topics and issues felt relevant....
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 14, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Early in The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng writes, “I felt I was about to enter a place that existed only in the overlapping of air and water, light and time.” This is an accurate description of a book that layers topics of Japanese garden design, Buddhist...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 13, 2021 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Etaf Rum writes an affecting debut novel in A Woman is No Man. This broke my heart like someone was sitting on my chest in every chapter. The oppressive cultural aspects of this Palestinian-American family make even the most conservative households seem progressive....
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 27, 2021 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi
Mariam Petrosyan is an Armenian-born author living in Russia. The Gray House is her debut novel, and she says her only novel. Although it’s a prize winner in Russia, I found it confusing and often amateurish. My main feeling at the end is, “thank goodness that’s...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 11, 2021 | LEARN: Chronic Illness, RESIST: Social Justice
Author Anne Fadiman combines multiple narratives in her fabulous ethnography The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Most importantly, it’s both an immigration and a medical story of one Hmong...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 20, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is a celebrated Vietnamese poet. With the release of her 2020 book, The Mountains Sing she’s also a novelist. The book is an intimate view of the Tran family and their struggles across decades and generations. Nguyễn uses two story lines to shape...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 8, 2021 | LEARN: Everything Else
Amy Stanley is a professor and social historian who specializes in early modern Japan. In her 2020 book, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, Stanley explores the story of a rebellious woman in a strict time. Her subject is Tsuneno, the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 1, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
As a first-time author, Julie Wu draws on family history in her historical fiction novel, The Third Son. Set initially in 1940s Japanese-occupied Taiwan, it follows the life of Saburo. He’s not a favored son. In fact, his mother only occasionally deigns to give him...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 28, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Amitav Ghosh creates a compelling multi-generational narrative in his historical fiction, The Glass Palace. As the book opens, Rajkumar is an 11-year-old boy from India stranded in Mandalay, Burma (now Myanmar). He finds himself in King Thibaw’s Glass Palace in 1885...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 17, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Alka Joshi is a debut novelist who used her mother’s life and her imagination to create The Henna Artist. It’s a very strong story that entranced me from moment one. In a nutshell, our heroine is Lakshmi and the time is 1950s India. Women still aren’t treated like...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 12, 2021 | LEARN: Everything Else
Elizabeth Norman delivers everything I want from narrative nonfiction in her 2000 book We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. It’s engaging and obviously well-researched, including many interviews with the women...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 3, 2021 | RELAX: Memoir
Afghani author and warrior Ukmina Manoori tells their unique story in I am a Bacha Posh: My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan. When they were a child, Manoori’s parents decided they needed another son. But whether due to genetics or medical situations,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 22, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Well-loved Turkish author Ayşe Kulin illustrates another angle on the early years of World War II in her 2002 book Last Train to Istanbul. (Translated to English in 2013.) The story is set partly in Turkey and partly in the Nazi-occupied French cities of Paris and...
Recent Comments