“A Case of Exploding Mangoes” by Mohammed Hanif (Pakistan) Review Readers enjoyed this book describing it as well written and witty. It had many of them laughing aloud all the way through it! They all agreed that the author pokes fun at those in power in a very clever way. They liked the description of…
“Clear Light of Day” by Anita Desai (India) Review Interestingly, there was a clear divide between readers whose first language is English and those for whom it is a foreign language. The native English speakers loved the book, whereas the non-native speakers did not enjoy it overall. This was largely due to the style of…
“The Woman in the Dunes” by Kobo Abe (Japan) Review The first impressions of members of the Book Club were very mixed: some liked the book, whereas some did not like it all! They found the situation the protagonist finds himself in very depressing. The repetitive shovelling of sand daily made them think about the…
“A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers” by Xiaolu Guo (China) Review Readers enjoyed the book, with some preferring the first half to the second. They liked the humour and the clever use of language as it evolves from poor to better English during the course of the story. They found the point of view from…
“The Lake” by Banana Yoshimoto (Japan) Review Mystical and mysterious were some of the words readers used to describe this book that they thoroughly enjoyed. Most were familiar with the author having read other of her books and they liked her writing style, which they found captured the atmosphere well. They were drawn to the…
“Island of a Thousand Mirrors” by Nayomi Munaweera (Sri Lanka) Review Readers were unanimous in their appreciation of this book. They described the writing style as beautiful and of high calibre for a first novel. It awakened all their senses, drawing them into the story and bringing the people and places vividly to life. They found…
“Sleeping on Jupiter” by Anuradha Roy (India) Review From a classic plot-driven novel to an unusual collective ‘novel-essay,’ the four shortlisted books for this year’s Summer Reading Group varied greatly in structure, style of writing, and point of view. Our summer readers also noticed a recurrent theme in all four of dreams and their many…
“Parade” by Shuichi Yoshida (Japan) Review From a first novel to a first attempt at a new genre by a well-known writer, this year’s Summer Reading selection of crime fiction covered a wide range of writing styles. Readers’ opinions varied from book to book, so it was no surprise that “Parade” won the Best Summer…
