Best of
Asian-Literature

2012

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store


Keigo Higashino - 2012
    This seemingly simple request for advice sets the trio on a journey of discovery as, over the course of a single night, they step into the role of the kindhearted former shopkeeper who devoted his waning years to offering thoughtful counsel to his correspondents. Through the lens of time, they share insight with those seeking guidance, and by morning, none of their lives will ever be the same.By acclaimed author Keigo Higashino, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store is a work that has touched the hearts of readers around the world.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles


Hiro Arikawa - 2012
    He is not sure where he's going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting Satoru's old friends. He meets Yoshimine, the brusque and unsentimental farmer for whom cats are just ratters; Sugi and Chikako, the warm-hearted couple who run a pet-friendly B&B; and Kosuke, the mournful husband whose cat-loving wife has just left him. There's even a very special dog who forces Nana to reassess his disdain for the canine species. But what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won't say. But when Nana finally works it out, his small heart will break...

Yasmin How You Know?


Orked binti Ahmad - 2012
    Contributed by those close to her, you may notice some are written in present tense - because to them, she's still very much alive - just not in a physical sense. the anecdotes here range from her days as a student, her many different phases in life, right up to the day of her passing. You'll find poems which Yasmin wrote, and photographs which she took (many may not know Yasmin was an accomplished poet and photographer). Also included are the last two TV commercial scripts written by her.

The Investigation


Jung-Myung Lee - 2012
    Beyond the prison walls, the war rages. Inside, a man is found brutally murdered. What follows is a searing portrait of Korea before their civil war, and a testimony to the redemptive power of poetry.Watanabe Yuichi, a young guard with a passion for reading, is ordered to investigate a murder. The victim, Sugiyama, also a guard, was feared and despised throughout the prison and inquiries have barely begun when a powerful inmate confesses. But Watanabe is unconvinced; and as he interrogates both the suspect and Yun Dong-ju, a talented Korean poet, he starts to realize that the fearsome guard was not all he appeared to be...As Watanabe unravels Sugiyama's final months, he begins to discover what is really going on inside this dark and violent institution, which few inmates survive: a man who will stop at nothing to dig his way to freedom; a governor whose greed knows no bounds; a little girl whose kite finds an unlikely friend. And Yun Dong-ju—the poet whose works hold such beauty the can break the hardest of hearts.As the war moves towards its devastating close and bombs rain down upon the prison, Watanabe realizes that he must find a way to protect Yun Dong-ju, no matter what it takes. As he digs further and further in to his investigation, the young guard discovers a devastating truth.At once a captivating mystery and an epic lament for lost freedom and humanity, The Investigation, inspired by a true story, is a sweeping and gripping tale by an international literary star.

Once A Princess


Angel Bautista - 2012
    You are the only puzzle I can’t seem to solve. But I love you. That’s why I won’t mind spending my entire life trying to understand you.”Once upon a time, there was a princess who could not live happily ever after…May hindi magandang ginawa si Erin Almeda, ang isa sa mga prinsesa ng Gibbons International School kung saan ang clique na kinabibilangan niya ay ang pinakapopular at pinakatinitingala. She played with the innocent heart of their class geek, Leonard Jamieson.Seven years later, nagtagpo uli ang mga landas nila ni Leonard. It seemed their roles had been reversed. Sa fairy tale man o sa real life, palaging may kapalit na curse ang paggawa ng masama.And so Erin needed to find the magic that will lift that curse. Or she will die of heartache soon…

What the Zhang Boys Know


Clifford Garstang - 2012
    Garstang makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The lives of the inhabitants of a condominium in Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown are told separately and as part of a web of entanglements. The entrances and exits are handled with the deftness of a French comedy, but the empathy of the author brings all the characters achingly alive. What the Zhang Boys Know is a wonderful and haunting book." - John Casey, author of Compass Rose and Spartina, winner of the National Book Award

Hong Kong Yesterday


Fan Ho - 2012
    Black and white images capturing life in mid-century Hong Kong range from quiet voyeuristic tableaus to chaotic crowds, most focusing on the citys inhabitants. Businessmen, families, dockworkers, alleys, markets and street scenes are all rendered in a style that is simultaneously abstract and humanistic. Fan Ho was born in Shanghai in 1937; he immigrated to Hong Kong as child and passed away in 2016.

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts


Haruo Shirane - 2012
    In Japan and the "Culture of the Four Seasons," Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery.Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing.Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.

Bright Moon, White Clouds: Selected Poems of Li Po


Li Bai - 2012
    Li Po (701–762) wrote of the pleasures of nature, of wine, and of the life of a wandering poet  in a way that speaks to us across the centuries with remarkable intimacy—and that special, timeless quality is one of the reasons Li Po became the first of the Chinese poets to gain wide appreciation in the West. His influence is felt in the work of artists as diverse as Ezra Pound and Gustav Mahler. J. P. Seaton’s translations—which include some poems that appear here in English for the first time—bring the poet vividly and playfully to life, and his introductory essay broadens our view of Li Po, both the poet and the man.

Scream from the Shadows: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan


Setsu Shigematsu - 2012
    Setsu Shigematsu’s book is the first to present a sustained history of ūman ribu’s formation, its political philosophy, and its contributions to feminist politics across and beyond Japan. Through an in-depth analysis of ūman ribu, Shigematsu furthers our understanding of Japan’s gender-based modernity and imperialism and expands our perspective on transnational liberation and feminist movements worldwide.In Scream from the Shadows, Shigematsu engages with political philosophy while also contextualizing the movement in relation to the Japanese left and New Left as well as the anti–Vietnam War and radical student movements. She examines the controversial figure Tanaka Mitsu, ūman ribu’s most influential activist, and the movement’s internal dynamics. Shigematsu highlights ūman ribu’s distinctive approach to the relationship of women—and women’s liberation—to violence: specifically, the movement’s embrace of violent women who were often at the margins of society and its recognition of women’s complicity in violence against other women.Scream from the Shadows provides a powerful case study of a complex and contradictory movement with a radical vision of women’s liberation. It offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the blind spots within our contemporary and dominant views of feminism across their liberal, marxist, radical, Euro-American, postcolonial, and racial boundaries.

Year of the Tiger


David Miller - 2012
    But when the tides of war turned against Japan in 1943, much of this treasure had to be buried in secret. Over the decades, the search for the legendary Yamashita's Gold had been in vain until now...A group of foreign workers digging a tunnel under the Padang in present-day Singapore stumbles across a treasure vault and inadvertently triggers a biological booby trap. An unknown strain of anthrax is released threatening a global holocaust. It is up to Assistant Superintendent Gerald Loh of the Singapore Police Force to decipher a cryptic clue left behind with the loot to halt this deadly plague.

Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems


Xi Chuan - 2012
    Notes on the Mosquito introduces English readers to one of the most revered poets of contemporary China. Gaining recognition as a post-Misty poet in the late ’80s, Xi Chuan was famous for his condensed, numinous lyricism, and for radiating classical Chinese influences as much as Western modernist traditions. After the crushing failure of Tiananmen Square and the death of two of his closest friends, he stopped writing for three years. He re-emerged transformed: he began writing meditative, expansive prose poems that dismantled the aestheticism and musicality of his previous self. Divided into two sections that hinge around this formal break, Notes on the Mosquito offers the greatest hits of a deeply engaging poet, whose work intertwines the mountains and roads of Xinjiang with insects and mythical beasts, ghosts and sacred spirits with chess and a Sanskrit inscription.

The Adventures of Na Willa (Na Willa, #1)


Reda Gaudiamo - 2012
    She spends her days running after trains with Dul, going to the market with her mother, and thinking about how people can sing through radios. Based on author Reda Gaudiamo’s memories of growing up in the 1960s, The Adventures of Na Willa is a collection of stories about adventures and musings of a multicultural girl growing up in Indonesia.