A rojak* of items that caught my
eye this week…
Around the World in 18 Days
The world-famous Edinburgh
International Book Festival, which will run from 15 – 31 August, has just
announced its most International programme ever. Asian authors participating
are:
Xinran: Journalist Xinran left
China in 1997 and has since established herself as a leading commentator on her home country. She will talk about her new book Buy Me The Sky, an exploration of China’s one-child generations, and an account of rapid social change, told through her trademark reliance on anecdote.
Haji Noor Deen: Chinese-Muslim calligrapher Haji Noor Deen is
one of the greatest living masters of Islamic calligraphy. He fuses Chinese and
Arabic styles, and his work is collected
across the world. Noor Deen will render ayahs (verses) from The Qur’an into works of beautiful
calligraphy.
Han Kang: Han Kang, from South
Korea, has already won major awards in her home country. She will discuss her first novel to be translated
into English, The Vegetarian, which has
received international acclaim.
Chen Guangcheng: Chen will talk about his memoir, The Barefoot Lawyer, which reveals his acerbic view of diplomacy between Clinton and the Chinese government, and details
his work with Chinese women who suffered abuse under the one-child policy.
Hyeonseo Lee: As a child of Kim
Il-sung’s North Korea, a teenage Hyeonseo Lee believed the Dear Leader was her
saviour, even holding on to that faith after she’d fled the country, initially for China, and later for South Korea. She will discuss her memoir, The
Girl with Seven Names, which not only tells her personal story, but also reveals human rights abuses
that have largely been kept secret.
Science Fiction in Japan and
Myanmar
Japanese science fiction has a
long history that may stretch back to the eighth-century tale of time traveller
Urashima Taro and the 10th-century story of moon-princess Kaguya-hime. Click
here for an in-depth exploration of the new face of Japanese sci-fi as it chases
an augmented world, by Iain Maloney, for the English-language edition of the
Japan Times.
Meanwhile, Zon Pann Pwint,
writing for the English-language edition of the Myanmar Times, laments
that despite the popularity of blockbuster space fantasy movies in Yangon, finding
a good Myanmarese writer of science fiction is pretty much impossible. Click here to read his piece, Ray guns and robots a
light-year too far for Myanmar writers.
Blog Spot
Do you run a blog you think may
be of interest to readers of Asian Books Blog?
If so, get in touch, preferably via e-mail - asianbooksblog@gmail.com -
because I want to include a weekly blog spot on Sundays. The idea is to
invite administrators of relevant and interesting-sounding blogs to write a
paragraph about their blog, to be posted in the blog spot.
*A rojak is a Singaporean salad. Like Asian Books Blog on Facebook,
or follow it on Twitter: @asianbooksblog
