The Bridegroom Ha Jin Pantheon, New York, 2000 Ha Jin uses his stark prose to haunting effect in these twelve short stories set in post cultural revolution China. I especially liked the title story, wherein a percieved model husband joins a secret men’s literary society and ultimately gets arrested for homosexuality. He is sentenced to [...]
A Clue to the Exit Edward St. Aubyn Chatto and Windus, U.K. 2000 Alan Hollinghurst calls St. Aubyn, “Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation.” According to the Guardian newspaper, the authentic ground of being is what Henry James called a clue to the exit from the human maze. St. Aubyn is a [...]
The Crazed Ha Jin William Heinemann, London, 2002 The Crazed is perhaps one of Ha Jin’s more challenging novels. But stick with it. It is well worth it. Set during the Tiananmen Square massacre, Jin employs his spare prose to tell the story of a ranting old professor who has recently suffered a stroke. Much [...]
Mercy Among the Children David Adams Richards Doubleday, Canada, 2000 Mercy Among the Children co-won the 2000 Giller Prize. Richards shared the honour with Michael Ondaatje, who won for Anil’s Ghost. The Giller Prize was only six years old at the time this book was published, but it was the first and only time they [...]
Cereus Blooms at Night Shani Mootoo Press Gang Publishers, Vancouver, Canada, 1996 Cereus Blooms at Night was a finalist for the 1997 Giller Prize, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Mootoo’s own art appears on the cover and the title page. I bought this copy at a yard [...]
The Friends of Meager Fortune David Adams Richards Doubleday, Canada, 2006 David Adams Richards is a well known Canadian literary figure. He has won many awards, and in 2009 was made a Member of the Order of Canada, ”for his contributions to the Canadian literary scene as an essayist, screenwriter and writer of fiction and non-fiction”. [...]
Fall On Your Knees Anne-Marie MacDonald Alfred A. Knopf, Canada, 1996 Anne-Marie MacDonald won the Commonwealth Prize for this wonderful Canadian novel. It also became an Oprah’s Pick in 2002. Also a playwright, journalist and actor, MacDonald is a well-known and multi-faceted artist here in Canada. She won three major prizes for her play Good [...]
Soul Mountain Gao Xingjian HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, 2000 Xingjian’s work was considered subversive by the Chinese government of the 1980′s. According to Wikipedia, after being misdiagnosed with lung cancer, Xingjian started hearing rumours that government officials were planning to send him to a prison farm. So in 1987 he emigrated to France. In [...]
The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood McClelland and Stewart, Canada, 2009 Canadian literary superstar Margaret Atwood wrote The Year of the Flood as a sort of sequel to Oryx and Crake — actually more of a companion novel. Her tour to promote the book included a choral group singing some of the hymns written by [...]
Waiting Ha Jin Pantheon, New York, 1999 Ha Jin was going to school on a scholarship at Brandeis University in Massachusetts during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. The Chinese Government’s widespread use of violence and repression to put down this protest hastened Jin’s emigration plans and shaped his choice to write in English. He [...]