Thursday 11 June 2015

Q & A: Jemimah Steinfeld

Asia House, in London, is a non-profit, non-political organisation that promotes the exchange of ideas between the diverse communities of Europe and Asia. Each May it hosts The Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival which features some of the best in literature with specifically Asian interest. For the first time this year Jemimah Steinfeld was Festival Manager – she is also the author of Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China.  I asked her to reflect on this year’s recently-concluded Festival.

Sunday 7 June 2015

The Sunday Post

A rojak* of items that caught my eye this week…

Sonny Liew: update
As discussed in the previous post, I recently met Edmund Wee, at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content. Edmund’s company, Epigram is graphic-novelist Sonny Liew’s Singapore publisher.  As reported last week, the government here recently withdrew a grant of SGD 8,000 for Sonny’s latest offering, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, over objections to the content. Edmund told me that as a result of the controversy, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye has become Epigram’s fastest selling book ever, and that the first print-run sold out in a week. He is now reprinting.

Quick Notice: Nine Cuts, short stories by Audrey Chin
Singaporean author Audrey Chin’s latest anthology includes stories about: the beating heart of a cannibal picking up a ghoul at a local market in the City-State; a Vietnamese–American grieving in Alaska; a sister’s love for her brother, and his dragon fish; a wealthy teenager coming to grips with her Catholic grandfather’s legacy...and much more. Using a cookery analogy, Audrey says the collection offers: “Poignant slices of heart - tender, done and spoiled.” 

Nine Cuts is to be published in paperback, by Singaporean publishing house, Math Paper Press, which focusses on poetry, new wave novellas, full-length novels, and essays. Final proofs are about to be sent to the printers, but here is a sneak peak of the cover.

Taslima Nasreen
Following the spate of murders of bloggers in Bangladesh, the outspoken secularist Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has moved to the US from India, where she'd been living in exile. She felt she was not safe in India, since she’d been getting death threats from the same Muslim extremists who killed the bloggers. Lend your support by following her on Twitter, here.

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 in The Sunday Post. 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.

Seen Elsewhere
Malaysian pulp fiction has been attracting a lot of attention. Click here for a report from The New York Times, and here, for coverage from Publishing Perspectives.


*A rojak is a Singaporean salad. Like Asian Books Blog on Facebook, or follow it on Twitter: @asianbooksblog

Friday 5 June 2015

Lion City Lit: Edmund Wee, Epigram Books

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Lion City Lit explores what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise.  This month, I meet Edmund Wee, the founder, publisher, and CEO of Epigram Books, one of Singapore’s largest general trade publishing houses.

Thursday 4 June 2015

500 Words From Melissa de Villiers

500 Words From...is a series of guest posts from authors, in which they talk about their recently published books. Here, Melissa de Villiers, a South African expat now living in Singapore, discusses The Chameleon House, her newly published collection of short stories set in post-apartheid South Africa, London and Singapore. The Chameleon House has been longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2015.

So, over to Melissa…

Just Quickly...

My recent interview with Xinran for Asian Review of Books was picked up by Caixin, click here.