The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder) (Pantheon, Random House August 13, 2019) Reviewed by Renae Lucas-Hall This internationally-acclaimed writer transports you to a disturbing dystopian island where everyone and everything gradually disappears, leaving its vulnerable inhabitants at the mercy of a terrifying totalitarian regime. Imagine, if you will, waking up knowing More…
Category: Reviews
Killing Commendatore — A Self-Portrait of Murakami’s Literary Landscape
Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen) (Harvill Secker, Penguin U.K., 2018) Reviewed by Renae Lucas-Hall A trend has developed over the past few years whenever there’s a discussion on Haruki Murakami or a review of his latest book. Murakami is a prolific writer, novelist, and translator who has written More…
Review—From the Fatherland, With Love
If you love Ryu Murakami, you won’t be disappointed with this novel, a fictional account of North Korea invading Japan.
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From the Fatherland, With Love by Ryū Murakami (Transl. Ralph McCarthy, Charles De Wolf, Ginny Tapley Takemori) (Pushkin Press, 2013) Reviewed by Andrew Douglas Sokulski From the Fatherland, With Love is an exhilarating, poetic, tearful, shocking, thrilling, and intensely realistic novel that focuses on what could occur if a force from North Korea were to More…
Review—Cake Tree in the Ruins
NEW RELEASE! Moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.
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The Cake Tree in the Ruins, by Akiyuki Nosaka (Transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) Pushkin Press (Nov. 13, 2018) Reviewed by Suzanne Kamata As an American reader, conditioned to expect happily-ever-after endings, or at least those in which justice is served, I found this to be an odd and disturbing book. From the titles of stories More…