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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
KING DEATH by Toby Litt. Penguin Books, 2010, 352 pp., £8.99 (paper) A complicated tale, simply and well told, “King Death” is Toby Litt’s 12th work of fiction, the “K” in his alphabetic collection and the second of his novels to be set mostly ...
THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, by David Mitchell. Random House, 2010, 496 pp., $26 (hardcover) “Black Swan Green,” David Mitchell’s fourth novel concerning a year in the life of 13-year-old Jason Taylor, reads like a first novel with its autobiographical backdrop and ...
MY FATHER WAS A FREEDOM FIGHTER: Gaza’s Untold Story, by Ramzy Baroud. Pluto Press, 2010, 320 pp., $18 (paper) Beginning in a Gaza Strip refugee camp with the author taking tearful leave of his home to travel to the United States of America, this ...
BROTHERS, by Yu Hua. Picador, 2010, 641 pp., £8.99 (paperback) In his 1989 essay “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast” Tom Wolfe argues: “It was realism that created the ‘absorbing’ or ‘gripping’ quality that is peculiar to the novel, the quality that makes the reader feel ...
THE MAN FROM BEIJING, by Henning Mankell. Harvill Secker, 2010, 368 pp., $25.95 (hardcover) A truly international thriller, “The Man From Beijing” moves from a hamlet in Sweden to China, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, with Copenhagen and London thrown into the mix. The novel also ...
THE SCENT OF SAKE, by Joyce Lebra. Avon Books, 2009, 384 pp., 2009, $13.99 (paperback) Think of gin and one thinks of England. Think of tequila and Mexico, vodka and Russia, brandy and France. Think of sake and one thinks only of Japan. Mentioned ...
TO KILL A TIGER: A Memoir of Korea, by Jid Lee. The Overlook Press, 2010, 320 pp., $25.95 (hardcover) Jid Lee, now a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, begins this memoir with the tale of the killing of her great-great-great-great- great-great ...
SANSHIRO, by Natsume Soseki. Translated by Jay Rubin. Penguin Classics, 2009, 288 pp., £9.99 (paperback) From Oct. 28, 1900, until Dec. 5, 1902, Natsume Soseki lived in Clapham, a district of South London. Ordered to England by the Meiji government, Soseki, without sufficient funds ...
In the introduction to the first English translation of her work, Takako Arai refers to poems as vacant lots, alluding to the economic suffering of her hometown Kiryu, Gunma Prefecture, and to the open spaces left by terrorism and bombs in New York City ...
Reading Mieko Kanai’s stories is an unsettling experience, like swimming underwater, existing in a new and shimmering medium, and coming up for air between stories just to make sure everything is still real — or as real as you remember it. Concurrently, it feels ...
THE GREAT FLOOD, by Frank Spignese. Printed Matter Press, 2009, 108 pp., $20 (paperback with CD) Frank Spignese’s short book of poetry, “The Great Flood,” comes with an audio CD of Frank reading pieces from the collection. I delved into the book first and ...
THE APPRENTICESHIP OF BIG TOE P, by Rieko Matsuura. Kodansha International, 2009, 448 pp., ¥2,730 (hardcover) As Kazumi Mano awoke one morning from a troubled dream, she found her big toe transformed into a monstrous penis. So it starts — Kafkaesque but oh so ...