Showing 1 - 10 of 15
Drowning in love
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 01/10/2021
» Not very often are the subjects of identity, race, racism told through a candid story of love. Open Water, a highly acclaimed novel by 27-year-old British-Ghanaian author Caleb Azumah Nelson is one of the few books that attempts to do just this, and with great effect.
Timeless love
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 13/08/2021
» Kim Bo-young is one of the most prolific science fiction writers of East Asia. At home in South Korea, where she is currently based, she won the best novella award in the first round of the Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Award with The Experience Of Touch, her first published book. She has also won the annual South Korea SF novel award twice. Kim has a forthcoming English translated short story and novellas in the United States. I'm Waiting For You And Other Stories is her first English translation work published in the UK.
Can a righteous resistance ever cross the line?
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 22/01/2021
» Sabotage, in French and in English, indicates the act of deliberately destroying or damaging property. It's an apparatus that aims at weakening an enemy or oppressor through means such as subversion and obstruction. It is a tool that, we are told, has been adopted by French workers as a substitute for strikes, but sabotage doesn't limit itself only to workplaces. Its literature survey connotes that it occurs within a variety of contexts -- in wars, political and social campaigns, or socio-economic programmes that effect someone's livelihood. In all cases, however, the intent of sabotage is analogous -- to use extreme civil disobedience to inflict damage upon goods or properties in order to serve a particular purpose or higher goal. The end justifies the means, according to the saboteurs.
A unity of none
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 17/04/2020
» In the morning of Aug 25, 2017, a group of militants belonging to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) unco-ordinatedly attacked police and border guards in northern Arakan (Rakhine) state, killing at least 12 officers. The Myanmar Armed Forces, known as the Tatmadaw, retaliated by launching a military counter-insurgency campaign in order to capture the perpetrators who attacked the border garrisons.
Finding the heart
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 05/07/2019
» Elaine Castillo's deep dive into California's Filipino diaspora is warm and layered, filled with wonderful language.
The lives of others
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 07/06/2019
» Born in 1969 to a farming family in Chon Buri, Pimjai Juklin -- aka Duanwad Pimwana -- is one of Thailand's preeminent writers of contemporary fiction. After briefly working as a journalist, Duanwad started writing short stories. She was first published in 1989 in a local Thai magazine. In 2003, she published her first novel, Chang Samran (Bright), which won the SEA Write Award, making her one of only seven women writers to have won the prestigious award since its inception 40 years ago.
A shady underworld
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 03/05/2019
» We, The Survivors, the fourth novel by the Malaysian-British Tash Aw, is a compelling account of the life of a working-class lad named Lee Hock Lye, or known among friends as Ah Hock. It's a vivid tale of an imaginative young man with ideas of setting foot in a better place than a ramshackle village where livelihood depends on fishing and harvesting cockles from the polluted mudflats. Ah Hock isn't an angry young man, nor is he an idler who accepts whatever comes his way as fate. He tries hard with life, changing numbers of jobs to make ends meet, hoping one day he'd move to settle down with a house and family in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or even farther afield. The world that he inhabits, however, is a microcosm of the much larger equilibrium, where society permits a select few to climb the ladder, and the majority -- the ilk of Ah Hock -- remains stuck in poverty, leading a life that's going nowhere.
City of angels and demons
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 22/03/2019
» You can leave the place where you were born, but it never truly leaves you. It's always there, calling you home.
An accessible yet enchanting reimagination of Romeo & Juliet
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 31/08/2018
» "Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale." Romeo And Juliet, William Shakespeare
Overcoming the racial divide
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 26/04/2018
» Shakespeare writes in The Winter's Tale that "there were no age between 10 and three-and-20, or that youth would sleep out the rest". Adolescence, or the marked "teenage years", encompass elements of biological growth and major social transformation, both of which are decidedly products of nature and culture. The time between youth and maturity can be sorrowful, hard, fun, sad and amazing. It never fails to inspire writers of fiction, to attempt to unravel the complexities of this concept of life. Charting into the unknown is always a favourite subject of those who write.