The closure of the Paris metro for two hours will leave Vietnamese commuters with lingering thoughts. A Japanese soldier continues to fight World War II even after his country surrenders. Fed up with sexism at work, a woman fakes a pregnancy to get out of certain unpaid jobs.
Vivid characters and memorable storylines abound in five works of fiction, all originally published overseas and recently translated into English. Written by authors from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, they offer a window into diverse cultures, customs, traditions, and national histories that may be unfamiliar to many English-speaking readers.
Reveals family secrets
In Zhang Yueran’s complex and captivating drama, Cocoon, two estranged childhood friends meet as adults.
Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong grew up together in the 1980s in Jinan, the capital of eastern China’s province. Although their backgrounds and social status are completely different, when Jiaqi transfers to Gong’s school, the two are unlikely to become friends. Over time, complicated events in the family separated them. Now settled in Beijing as an adult, Jiaqi returns to Jinan to take care of her grandfather and makes a surprise visit to Gong, whom she has not seen for 18 years. Over a snowy night, the two reminisce about their childhoods, their troubled families, and the intricate web of deadly secrets that connect the two families to events during China’s turbulent Cultural Revolution.
Zhang is the author of three other novels and numerous short stories. He is famous in his country. Cocoon, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang, should attract more readers to this exciting young author.
Fighting an imaginary war
In his long and distinguished career as a short story and documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog has been drawn into the lives of unusual characters, often loners who pursue goals that are barely attainable.
Like many of his films, Herzog’s lean and poetic first novel, Twilight World , is based on the true story of Hiro Onoda, a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Ono, located on the island of Lubang in the Philippines, was ordered to hold and defend the island at all cost after the Japanese withdrawal, to make its own decisions and make its own rules without orders from above. “You will be like ghosts, you will be a constant nightmare for the enemy,” it is said. “Your war will be inglorious.”
Fighting in the jungle using guerrilla tactics and all communications cut off, Onoda did not know the war was over until less than a year after taking his command. He and several men under his command continued the war for another 29 years, raiding villages for food and surviving ambushes by terrorist residents whose farms were looted, and were constantly on the move. Years later, Onoda would mistake American planes flying into Korea and then Vietnam as evidence that the war was still on. He believes that the leaflets dropped on the island calling for the surrender of himself and his men are fabricated by the enemy.
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann, Twilight World is a beautiful meditation on time, self-discipline, purpose, and unwavering commitment to a hopeless mission.
Bone monologue
Chinatown, written by Nguyễn An Lý, translated from Tun and Vietnamese, opens in 2004 in the Paris Metro, where a suspicious luggage bag is found. During a two-hour delay while authorities investigate a possible terrorist threat, the unnamed narrator descends into a dreamy, 158-page monologue. He recalls the main events of his life: his childhood in Vietnam in the 1980s; His migration to Soviet Russia under Gorbachev; her brief marriage to Thuy, who abandoned her 12 years ago and was hated by her parents because of her Chinese heritage; and her current life in Paris, where she teaches English and works on a novel.
First published in Vietnam in 2005, “Chinatown” opens as a single paragraph and is uninterrupted except for two long passages from “I Am Yellow,” about a man who abandons an announcer’s family. A stream-of-consciousness monologue, the narrator’s constantly distorted thoughts reflecting on his life and trying to make sense of his past, harkens back to the modernist literary movement of the early 20th century. The author’s reliance on repetition of thoughts and memories lends the novel’s prose a propulsive quality, driving the largely plotless narrative forward.
While the style may not appeal to everyone, the adventure reader will find much to enjoy and admire in this unusual novel.
Interesting collection
A young woman finds sparrows living in her ribs. A soldier becomes trapped in a minefield during the Iran-Iraq war, scaring away the birds that will take away the remains of his fallen comrades. Girls in a village in Iraq wake up with a starfish in their hair. Butterflies sprouted from Walt Whitman’s wild beard above a public park and “spread everywhere like algae.”
Transformation is a common theme in Dia Jubaili’s fascinating and highly inventive short story collection, No Windmills in Basra. Many characters undergo metamorphosis, changing from one thing to another, and the cloud of war hangs over many events. The 76 short stories that make up the collection, published in the writer’s homeland of Iraq in 2018 and taken from the tales of the Arab peoples, also show the strong influence of Latin American magical realism, as well as echoes of writers such as Kafka, Chekhov, and Cervantes. O. Henry.
Jubayli has published nine novels and three other short story collections in his country. No Windmills in Basra, translated from the Arabic by Chip Rossett, is Jubayli’s first book translated into English. Most stories are no longer than two pages. Reading flash fiction can sometimes feel like trying to cook an hors d’oeuvre, but this book is important and offers a fascinating glimpse into a part of the world that is not well understood by many English speakers.
Bringing the lie to term
Amy Yagi’s debut novel, The Void Diary , translated from the Japanese by David Boyd and Lucy North, has a touch of magical realism. Shibata works for a company that manufactures cardboard tubes for paper products. The only woman in her department, she is expected to do things like make coffee, shop for supplies, and clean up after everyone on top of her usual duties. Tired of this attitude, she tells everyone that she is pregnant. “What I did wasn’t meant to be an act of rebellion – more like a little experiment,” he says. “I was curious. I wanted to see what my colleagues thought, maybe someone who actually came to the meeting.’
In the first weeks, Shibata believes that pregnancy includes some unexpected benefits. His coworkers treat him with respect, and he allows himself to leave work at 5 p.m., long enough to get to the grocery store before the grocery section is taken. When she has extra time, she cooks herself elaborate meals, takes long baths, watches classic movies on TV, and attends Mom’s aerobics class.
It takes effort to keep Shibata’s lie. As the weeks pass and she struggles to perform her maneuver, her pregnancy feels more and more real to her, so much so that a colleague feels the baby kick and notices the fetus flashing the peace sign on the ultrasound. Readers who enjoy the absurd should find this short, quirky novel very interesting.
