Claire Kohda Hazelton

Water, water everywhere: Touring the Land of the Dead, by Maki Kashimada, reviewed

8 May 2021 9:00 am

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?

15 August 2020 9:00 am

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

4 July 2020 9:00 am

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

4 April 2020 9:00 am

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

21 March 2020 9:00 am

‘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

5 October 2019 9:00 am

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

10 August 2019 9:00 am

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

20 July 2019 9:00 am

At the very back of the eye is a cluster of cells called ipRGCs. They are cells that don’t depend…

Two geishas relax after entertaining a client. Inset is the curfew bell at Asakusa, the major entertainment centre of old Tokyo. Woodblock print by Toyohara Chikanobu

Passing bells for old Tokyo

25 May 2019 9:00 am

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

6 April 2019 9:00 am

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

23 March 2019 9:00 am

Between 1639 and 1853, seeds and scions of flowering cherry trees travelled across Japan to Edo (present-day Tokyo). Each came…

Yiyun Li, Credit: Roger Turesson

No escape from grief: Where Reasons End, by Yiyun Li, reviewed

16 February 2019 9:00 am

When Yiyun Li first became a writer, she decided that she would leave behind her native language, Chinese, and never…

Credit: Getty Images

The ghostly Thames: Once Upon a River, by Diane Setterfield, reviewed

26 January 2019 9:00 am

While its shape is famous — prominent on maps of London and Oxford — the Thames is ‘unmappable’, according to…

Barbara Kingsolver. Credit David Wood

Treat in store: Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed

3 November 2018 9:00 am

In a living room in Vineland, New Jersey, in the 1870s, a botanist and entomologist named Mary Treat studied the…

A rare photograph by Bernice Abbott of Lucia Joyce dancing in the 1920s

Lucia, by Alex Pheby, reviewed

23 June 2018 9:00 am

In 1988, James Joyce’s grandson Stephen destroyed all letters he had from, to or about his aunt Lucia Joyce, the…

The Yamato wheels in a tight curve in an effort to avoid aerial bombardment

The spectacular suicide mission of the world’s greatest battleship

10 March 2018 9:00 am

In April 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato — the largest and heaviest in history — embarked upon a suicide mission.…

Jesmyn Ward sees dead people

9 December 2017 9:00 am

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

2 December 2017 9:00 am

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

8 July 2017 9:00 am

It might seem unlikely that a Christian noblewoman could have had influence over a Muslim city in the 13th century,…