Showing 1 - 7 of 7
From Edo to Edinburgh
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 14/03/2026
» The opera based on the long and industrious life of Japanese print master Katsushika Hokusai had its world premiere in Glasgow and travelled to Edinburgh for two consecutive nights last month. I braved the strong winds of the Edinburgh evening to watch The Great Wave at the Festival Theatre on its last day.
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.
Magic in the mundane
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 02/08/2019
» Hailing from Chon Buri, Duanwad Pimwana is one of Thailand's best known fiction writers. Acclaimed for her imaginative takes on the realities of Thai society, Duanwad has authored numerous literary works, including novels, poetry, short stories and writings that mostly blend elements of magic with social realism that aim to highlight the socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind them. Bright, or Changsamran in Thai, Duanwad's first feature novel, won the prestigious SEA Write Award in 2003. By the time it was released in America last year, Bright was the first book by a Thai woman writer translated into English. The book is translated by Mui Poopoksakul, a Berlin-based translator who has done a remarkable job in translating the mundane into the magical.
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