In her new book Friends and Dark Shapes, Australian-Indian writer Kavita Bedford explores a topic that few talk about: the limbo of being a single twenty-something with no permanent career prospects or domestic comforts in sight. In the wake of her father’s death, the nameless narrator is lost trying to…
Mirror Lake, by French-Canadian internationally acclaimed crime writer Andrée A. Michaud, is an arresting, surrealist thriller that is propelled by a deeply relatable yet comically unlikable protagonist. Robert Moreau is a fifty-something retiree who abruptly left behind his family and friends, with only his loyal dog Jeff as company, to…
At the end of the book, I was left wondering who was the title beast? Alexander or Blanche? It was only in the days after as I continued to ponder that question that I stumbled across the original French title—as a novice student of French, I was struck by its…
As the name suggests, An I-Novel is a semi-autobiographical novel told in the confessional manner that characterizes the Japanese literature genre of the same name. Given the author and protagonist Minae’s fascination with the Meiji period of Japan’s history, it is only fitting that the book’s title would harken back…
Have you ever wished to switch lives with someone? This is the question at the center of A Man by Japanese literary writer and philosopher Keiichiro Hirano. Told from the perspective of Akira Kido, a divorce attorney with his own struggling marriage, A Man investigates the spiral of lies that…
