The World of Books - Asia

Continuing with our look at books from around the world, this week Books takes a peek into the talent from Asia

Ma Jian The Noodle Maker Vintage

Ma Jian left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1987, shortly before his works were banned in native China where his collection of short stories, Stick Out Your Tongue, was denounced as ‘spiritual pollution’. This instinct for interesting – albeit highly subjective – insights into Chinese culture is continued in subsequent works, such as The Noodle Maker.

During one drunken dinner, a professional propaganda writer bemoans his latest Party commission; he has, instead, an unwritten novel in his head. This is a tapestry of inspired characters, often wryly macabre vignettes, interjected with witty criticisms of the Party that permeates every aspect of life. Though the professional writer will never scribe these stories, Ma Jian weaves them into his, in a sardonic yet sorrowful satire of his homeland. His writing is characterised by this emotive celebration and condemnation of life, a fusion of humour and humanity.

Rozii Eastoe Norwegian Wood Vintage

A quick glance through your local bookshop confirms that Kyoto’s finest export, Haruki Murakami, is fast becoming Japan’s most broadly translated novelist. Repeatedly favoured as a Nobel prize candidate, Murakami’s illuminating novel writing has won him both the Yomiuri Literary and Franz Kafka Prizes.

Despite his increasingly fervent popularity at the time I had little idea of what to expect from the first Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase, that was pushed into my then reluctant hand. Friends fumbled vainly to explain the novels merit but one thing they were certain was that it was imperative to my well being that I found out. Several more of his books since I find myself talking with the same exasperation when recommending Murakami; the tapestry of alienation and charm, the traditional magic sense of the word that is, strung in A Wild Sheep Chase is delicate and affecting beyond description, a possible testimony of his million strong readership. Fionnuala Coombs

Kiran Desai The Inheritance of Loss Hamish Hamilton

Coming from a very literary family, Kiran Desai had a lot to live up to. Her mother, critically-acclaimed Indian author Anita Desai, was short-listed 3 times for the Booker Award. However, like a true star Kiran rose to the challenge. Her first book Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard won the Betty Trask award, and her second The Inheritance of Loss, which took 8 years to write, won the Booker prize in 2006. She was the youngest female to ever win the award.

The Inheritance of Loss focuses on very few characters, yet it explores many international issues such as multiculturalism and economic inequality. Despite being set in the mid 1980s there is a definite feeling of post 9/11 attitudes mingled within the larger themes.

Avalyn Beare Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children Vintage

Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian writer. He first achieved fame with Midnight’s Children, published in 1981, which won the Booker prize, and was later awarded the ‘Booker of Bookers’ prize.

The novel follows the life of Saleem Sinai, born on the very moment of Indian Independence in 1947. The course of Saleem’s life is inextricably linked with the course of the newly forming Indian nation. The novel echoes the trauma the nation suffered in the build up to, and in reactions to partition. However, it also has much comedy, and magical, mystical elements woven into the story. It is an engrossing and endearing novel, that is said to have been one of the most important novels to come of the English-speaking world in this generation. Emily Khan