ILUSTRADO by Miguel Syjuco

Book Quote: “Could it be that he had grown too soft for a city such as this, a place possessed by a very different balance? Here, need blurs the line between good and bad, and a constant promise of random violence sticks like humidity down your back. Wholly different from the zeitgeist lining the Western […]

May 17, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Asia, SE, Man Asia Award, New York City, Unique Narrative, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

SMALL KINGDOMS by Anastasia Hobbet

Anastasia Hobbet’s novel about life in Kuwait between Saddam’s invasion of that country and the American invasion of Iraq is both gorgeous in its prose and compelling in its varied perspectives. Kuwait here is a real country, not a geographical footnote to a war, populated by people, both Kuwaiti and not, who navigate the difficult terrain of fear, loyalty, and social conventions. The story follows its characters to the brink of the second war where they, like the country they inhabit, face the changes ahead.

March 7, 2010 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2010 Favorites, Class - Race - Gender, Middle East, World Lit

THE ROAD HOME by Rose Tremain

The eminent, award-winning British Author, Rose Tremain, has written another lovely book. THE ROAD HOME is about Lev, an eastern European immigrant and his travails and successes in the big city of London. Lev is a widower who has left his child with his mother in Auror, a small town in eastern Europe. Lev hopes to seek his fortune in London, expecting to make a lot of money and be able to send it home to support his family. He has arrived in London with about 100 pounds in his pocket and nothing else.

December 16, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Orange Prize, United Kingdom, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

MILES FROM NOWHERE by Nami Mun

Nami Mun’s MILES FROM NOWHERE is a bold and gritty account of a young girl who leaves home at thirteen and experiences life on the streets, rape, addiction, and a series of horrific life events. She writes with no holds barred and her book reminded me in some ways of LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN by Hubert Selby, Jr. It’s has that succinct, in-your-face style of writing that is both riveting and painful at the same time.

December 8, 2009 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Contemporary, Debut Novel, New York City, Reading Guide

ANNA IN-BETWEEN by Elizabeth Nunez

ANNA IN-BETWEEN is a novel about an unmarried, Caribbean woman in her late thirties, Anna Sinclair, who begins to understand herself as she comes to understand her parents. The novel explores issues of caste, race and culture in a moving, deeply poignant tale of mother and daughter. Anna goes back to the island of her birth as she does every year, but this time she stays for a month to spend more time with her aging parents…

November 14, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2009 Favorites, Caribbean, Class - Race - Gender, Family Matters, Latin American/Caribbean, Literary, y Award Winning Author

BOX 21 by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom

The grisly lives of innocent, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old Lithuanian girls, tricked into leaving their homeland on the promise of good jobs, unfold in tawdry detail as Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström focus on the sex trade in Sweden, its clientele, the financial syndicates which profit from it, the enforcers which protect it, and the police and others who allow it to flourish. Lydia Grajauskas, a “pro” with three years of experience by the age of twenty, like her friend Alena Sljusareva, serves twelve customers a day, earning almost no income except what she can negotiate with her customers for “extras.” Living in an apartment which a Russian with a diplomatic passport claims as “Lithuanian territory,” exempt from Swedish laws, Lydia can expect little help from the local police. Until she is beaten within an inch of her life.

October 16, 2009 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Sleuths Series, Sweden, Translated