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Share With all the Great Leap Forward books I’ve been reading, I thought I’d take a break and try something contemporary. So last week I picked up Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village (Grove Press, 2011), which has been listed as a finalist for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. Several weeks ago I read and [...] Share This week I fired up my Kindle and read Kim Arbor’s page-clicking novel, His Wife and Daughters. Although the story revolves around the family of a California congressman who is involved in a 1980s sex scandal, it’s so much more than a scandal. As a result, this novel has caused me to look at the [...] Share One of the most remarkable things about the famine which occurred in China between 1958 and 1962 was that for over twenty years, no one was sure whether it had even taken place. So begins Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine (The Free Press, 1996), the first account of how 30 to 45 million–or [...] Share My holiday season has been nice and quiet, allowing me to plow through a few novels and memoirs since my kids went on break 10 days ago. One memoir I recently finished was Ma Thanegi’s Defiled on the Ayeyarwaddy (ThingsAsian Press, 2010). The title refers to the defiles (gorges) on the Ayeyarwaddy (formerly Irrawaddy) River in [...] Share I don’t know what it is about the Cultural Revolution, but I’m somehow drawn to it, especially when it comes to literature. In my own writing, I’ve often explored the tolls it took on personal relationships. So last week I was quite excited to read Xujun Eberlein’s collection of short stories, Apologies Forthcoming: Stories Not [...] |
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Copyright © 2012 Susan Blumberg-Kason - All Rights Reserved |
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