Water, water everywhere: Touring the Land of the Dead, by Maki Kashimada, reviewed
Maki Kashimada won the 2012 Akutagawa Prize for Touring the Land of the Dead, the strange, unsettling novella that makes…
Who is telling the truth in Kate Reed Petty’s True Story?
This debut novel, which opens with ‘a high- school lacrosse party in 1999 and the rumour of a sexual assault,’…
The attraction of repulsion: The Disaster Tourist, by Yun-Ko Eun, reviewed
Disaster tourism allows people to explore places in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters. Sites of massacres and concentration…
The devastating effects of bigamy: Silver Sparrow, by Tayari Jones, reviewed
Conservative estimates place the number of those in America with more than one spouse as up to 100,000, but the…
A woman’s lot is not a happy one in: Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 reviewed
‘Buy pink baby clothes,’Kim Jiyoung, the protagonist of this bestselling South Korean novel is told at the obstetrician’s surgery. Jiyoung’s…
Round North Korea with Michael Palin in rose-tinted spectacles
Michael Palin in North Korea, a two-part documentary in which the Python is given a tightly choreographed tour of that…
For the inhabitants of Ramallah, ‘home’ is just a memory
On a rainy day in 1955, four-year-old Raja Shehadeh left school without putting his coat on. ‘I will soon be…
It’s time we treated the moon with some respect
At the very back of the eye is a cluster of cells called ipRGCs. They are cells that don’t depend…
Passing bells for old Tokyo
In Edo (now Tokyo), before the Meiji restoration, bells marked the beginning of each hour. The hours were named after…
Barefoot in the park: Tokyo Ueno Station, by Yu Miri, reviewed
In 1923, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9 struck Tokyo and Yokohama. A huge area of Tokyo burned. But,…
The Englishman who saved Japan’s cherry blossoms
Between 1639 and 1853, seeds and scions of flowering cherry trees travelled across Japan to Edo (present-day Tokyo). Each came…
No escape from grief: Where Reasons End, by Yiyun Li, reviewed
When Yiyun Li first became a writer, she decided that she would leave behind her native language, Chinese, and never…
The ghostly Thames: Once Upon a River, by Diane Setterfield, reviewed
While its shape is famous — prominent on maps of London and Oxford — the Thames is ‘unmappable’, according to…
Treat in store: Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed
In a living room in Vineland, New Jersey, in the 1870s, a botanist and entomologist named Mary Treat studied the…
Lucia, by Alex Pheby, reviewed
In 1988, James Joyce’s grandson Stephen destroyed all letters he had from, to or about his aunt Lucia Joyce, the…
The spectacular suicide mission of the world’s greatest battleship
In April 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato — the largest and heaviest in history — embarked upon a suicide mission.…
Jesmyn Ward sees dead people
The events of this book take place where the world of the living and the world of the dead rub…
Sisters under the skin: Han Kang’s The White Book reviewed
Before the narrator of The White Book is born, her mother has another child; two months premature, the baby dies…
A woman of some importance
It might seem unlikely that a Christian noblewoman could have had influence over a Muslim city in the 13th century,…
