books @ cc.

by Natsume Soseki (1922)

Botchan, a young Japanese “black sheep of the family”, a younger son that fell short from his older brother, is a “straight-shooter” with a knack for troubles and misdeeds. With his family favouring his older brother, the only one who seems to genuinely care for him (and vice versa) is Kiyo, the woman-servant. When his father dies, he was given a small portion of the legacy but was disclaimed of any further family responsibility.

by Kenzaburo Oe (1964)

Bird, the anti-hero protagonist of this book, is the archetypal frustrated, alienated youth, resenting the burdens of responsibility that age and marriage has caged him in from reaching his utopian dream of travelling to Africa. Casting his life adrift, never bothering for (if not resentin) any purpose, never facing his problems, Bird is forced to face his newly-born baby, the final obligation that “may clang the door shut”: a deformed, vegetable infant.

by Remy Sylado (2003)

A historical novel, the story of Kembang Jepun tells the story of a Menadonese child sold by her brother to Shinju in Kembang Jepun, Surabaya, to be trained, disguised, into an out-and-out Japanese geisha, and takes place from pre-Japanese colonial to post-independence era. The strength of the novel lies not on its romantic plot, but on its rich historical facts and nuances colouring its meticulously constructed universe.

by Elfriede Jelinek (1981)

A somewhat failed musical prodigy, the strict and rigid Erika Kohut taught piano at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory during the day and trawls the porn districts by night. Living (and still sleeping in one bed) with her domineering mother, who’s “old enough to be her grandmother”, her life has been congenitally forced along her Mother’s ideal.

by Ahmadou Kourouma (1981)

The Suns of Independence, a short novel of early post-colonial Africa, tells the story of Fama, the prince of Horodugu region, ‘the last of the Dumbuya’ who had reigned over the Malinke. Inheriting the respect of the position title yet stripped from the power of the pre-Independence world, Fama and his wife, Salimata, struggles to fit in this ill-fitted world, “his efforts had brought about his ruin, for like aleaf that’s just been used to wipe somebody’s arse, once Independence had been won Fama was thrown to the flies and forgotten.”

by Edogawa Rampo (1956)

A lucidly-translated collection of short mystery stories , Japanese Tales gives English-language readers a spell-binding peek into the works of Edogawa Rampo, “Japan’s most famous mystery writer”. (I first knew about the name from the Indonesian-licensed manga Detektif Conan  by Aoyama Gosho, and Febby then acquaint me further to Rampo’s popularity among Japanese readers.)

by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

A father and his son wander through a charred, ravaged post-apocalyptic world, where all matter of wildlife is extinct and the rain ashen. Scavenging the scarce food that is left and, with a pistol, fending of the lawless “bad guys” — lawless, plundering bands of cannibals, they continue their journey to reach the coast, despite not knowing what awaits them there.

by Orhan Pamuk (1998)

In Istanbul, in the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a book to Enishte Effendi, instead of his head illustrator, Master Osman. Working with the most prominent miniaturists of the day: Elegant, Butterfly, Stork, and Olive, Enishte is to create a book that will display the Sultan’s prominence and power to the infidel Venetians — illustrated in the Frankish manner, i.e. using shadows, perspective, etc. to make the subjects recognisable and representational.

by John Updike (2006)

Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is the son of an Irish-American mother, Teresa Mulloy, and an Egyptian father, Omar Ashmawy, who disappeared when Ahmad was three. Taken under the strict guidance of Shaik Rashid when he was eleven where he begins his bi-weekly Qur’an and Arabic lessons, Ahmad moves through the post-9/11 “New Prospect” in New Jersey with the (typical) revulsion for the materialistic, hedonistic “Americanism”.

by Danilo Kiš (1972)

The book starts with a prologue that muses on the chalice/faces optical illusion, which then proceeds to interspersions of Travel Scenes, Notes of a Madman, and Criminal Investigation, each one with its own distinctive narrative (3rd-person narrative, 1st-person, silent dialogue), sometimes short sometimes running for pages. We are introduced to he protagonist, a railway clerk known as E.S., inquiring indignantly to the authorities for his reduced pension, and in his narrative also reveals other mundane day-to-day concerns (his quarrel with his sister and nephew) that he seems absurdly obsessed with, that at initial glance looks arbitrary but slowly and chillingly grows into dawning comprehension, that this is a futile defiant thrashing of a condemned man in the face of the implicit story that was taking place — the extermination and the massacre of the Jews.