Synopsis: Overweight Dominican uber-nerd battles a ‘fuku’, a Caribbean curse that has beleaguered his family across two countries and over three generations, in his quest for love and the fame of becoming “The Dominican JRR Tolkien”. My Take: Strangely enough for a recent Pulitzer Prize winner, I only heard about Junot Diaz’s “The Brief and [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Japanese'
“The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, Junot Diaz
November 2nd, 2009 · 1 Comment · Japanese
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“Spring Snow”, Yukio Mishima
August 20th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Asian, Japanese, Literature
Synopsis: Dilettante son of a nouveau-riche family seeking societal acceptance meets the refined daughter of an aristocratic family struggling to adjust to the changes in Japanese society brought on by the Meiji Restoration. A deeply intense and culturally significant story of forbidden love. My Take: “Spring Snow” is generally regarded to be Yukio Mishima’s greatest [...]
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"Norwegian Wood", Haruki Murakami
June 23rd, 2009 · 1 Comment · Asian, Japanese, Trash
Synopsis: Boy meets girl. Boy commits suicide. Boy’s best friend falls in love with girl. Girl loses grasp on reality. Boy meets another girl. Metaphysical angst ensues. My Take: The cover blurb of Norwegian Wood describes the novel thus: “When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend [...]
Tags:Haruki Murakami
"The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With The Sea", Yukio Mishima
June 12th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, Japanese, Literature
Synopsis: Teenage boy watches widowed mother sleep with handsome sailor through hole in bedroom wall. Boy becomes disillusioned with handsome sailor when he chooses his mother over life on the sea and begins plotting revenge. My Take: In a word, dark. Brett Easton Ellis dark. Reminded me a lot of the Catcher in the Rye [...]
Tags:Yukio Mishima
"An Artist of the Floating World", Kazuo Ishiguro
June 11th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, English, Japanese, Literature, Under-Rated
Synopsis: An aging painter contemplates his life as an artist of the ‘floating world’ (‘Ukiyo‘) of Tokyo’s pleasure seeking districts and struggles to come to terms with his place in post-war Japan. Sometimes hindsight doesn’t come with 20/20 vision. My Take: As you may have guessed by now, I have a real peccadillo for Japanese [...]
Tags:Kazuo Ishiguro
"Confessions of a Mask", Yukio Mishima
May 26th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, Japanese, Literature
Synopsis: The (presumably auto-biographical) story of a young gay boy trying to fit into Japanese society. My Take: Mishima is one of those authors (like Solzenitzen or Hemmingway) whose work is made even richer by their his extraordinary personal life. A militant Japanese ultra-conservative (fascist really) martial arts aficionado, Mishima isn’t your usual suspect for [...]
Tags:Yukio Mishima
