Burrowing deep inside the tension-filled relationship between contemporary Vietnam’s hyper-capitalist society and its communist government, Ta Duy Anh’s The Termite Queen tells the Kafkaesque story of a young man who must expose the corruption of a vast network of murky figures profiting from their connections to power. Banned in Vietnam, this allegorical story is told by Viet, a native-born Vietnamese who takes over his deceased father’s powerful land development corporation. The funeral hasn’t even concluded before Viet suspects foul play, as one clue after another leads him to question everything he thought he knew about his father, their family business, and its incredible ability to get approval for projects with dubious societal and environmental returns. With the Termite Queen, Ta Duy Anh cements his reputation as one of contemporary Vietnam’s greatest fabulists, having filled this tale with criticisms that can only come from a deep and abiding love for his country.
Catagory: Literature & Fiction
A Surplus of Sadness
There’s no shortage of sadness. There’s no blaming those who succumb to omnipresent gloom. It’s today’s pervasive emotional climate.
However, there’s also enough laughter to go around. At least laughter that comes with a knowing wink, in camaraderie with the many prone to sadnesses.
This collection of 19 short stories hopes to make you laugh. That is: Despite the planet heating up. Despite the constant threat of fascism and disinformation. Despite empires disguised as good guys. Despite neoliberalism’s false promises and the ruthless competition it demands. Despite the persistent clout of capitalism, unrelenting in its dominion over life, over happiness.
Despite, perhaps, a lack of exercise . . .
By the end of the book, laughter finds a purpose, a place in the collective, aware of its rightful target. From sadness to laughter to indignation.
But wait there’s more.
Cheers.
The Koro Riots
The Koro Riots is a satire regarding the political struggle in an imaginary country called Hujung Manani, a former French colony in South East Asia. Its leader, Priapus, is a dictator. His wife Datin Lotis, uses black magic, namely the power of a weretiger. The narrative revolves around the Koro epidemic which occurs in this republic. It is a mental illness which affects men who believe that their penis shrinks into their body and disappears. The koro epidemic causes several small incidents, which later turn into riots. Eventually, the rebellion becomes a revolution, and the population of Hujung Manani overthrows the Dictator and his wife. These incidents are told from a variety of perspectives while adding background stories about politics in Hujung Manani. For this, the novel introduce several ‘disposable’ characters such as Kadir Mohamed, the former Editor in Chief of the Hujung Manani Tribune; Ashraf Wahidi, a celebrity preacher; and Psychiatrist Dr Cakravantin. The Dictator also has to face his political enemy who is the protagonist, named Pertiwi. She is a feminist, and in her nineties still succeeds in overthrowing Priapus, assisted by a Scientist (Badang) and Shulamit, his Jewish wife. At the end Pertiwi is killed by a suicide bomber named Zikir Baik while delivering a speech in the style of Martin Luther King. The struggle for democracy is carried on by Badang. However, Hujung Manani still faces threats posed by traitors like the Tycoon who is involved in a deep state.
Mami Suzuki: Private Eye
Beneath the sheen of its orderly streets and obedient populace, all is not well in the port city of Kobe. Business is as brisk as the Haru-ichiban spring breeze for Mami Suzuki, hotel clerk by day, private investigator by night.
Who’s stealing from Japan’s biggest pearl trader? Where’s the master sushi chef and why are his knives missing? How did the tea ceremony teacher’s brother really die? And what does an island of cats have to do with a pregnant Shinto shrine maiden?
From the Kobe wharfs to the rugged Japan Sea coast, the subtropics of Okinawa, and a remote island community in the Seto Inland Sea, each new adventure ends with a universal truth – that there are two sides to every story of misfortune.
The American Dream
“We are going to help him die Cassie,” Zaneta told me that afternoon, over steaming cups of soy milk latte, as casually as if announcing a gardening project.
Cassie was an international student at Harvard, the most prestigious university in the world. She was shy and observant, yet underneath her quiet disposition was a desire to experience the world to the fullest, beyond her traditional boundaries and limitations.
One fateful night at the university campus, a free-spirited, daredevil student from the extension school named Zaneta came into her life and they became fast friends over the next four years.
In the spring semester of Cassie’s senior year, Zaneta disclosed to her that she was looking for a partner-in-crime to consort with a wealthy elderly benefactor who planned to kill himself in a year’s time. In exchange for companionship and assistance in the suicide process, they would inherit all his assets and properties after his death.
Thus began the premise for a thrillingly seductive spiral down a rabbit hole over the spring break in Florida, where Cassie inevitably had to cross a point of no return.
The American Boyfriend
Phoebe Wong would do anything to escape a British winter. But it may cost her more than her airfare.
Sunsets, tacos and margaritas all sound perfect to exhausted forty-three-year-old single mum Phoebe with a dead-end job in Southwark. When her long distance boyfriend in New York invites her to meet him in Florida, she couldn’t wait to jump on a plane with her toddler. Arriving with her teething child at her boyfriend’s Key West ‘vacay home’ before him, she is robbed on her first night. With no money, cards or passports, she is grateful for the support of friendly locals. At a BBQ, she meets an old expat British businessman. Her boyfriend arrives eventually, apologetic, and takes her out to a posh seafood dinner. But when the British expat is shot that night in the same restaurant’s car park, Phoebe is trapped in a put-up job, and her boyfriend’s delayed arrival is suspiciously timed. If this place has turned darker and chillier than London, she wants out.
Will she be able to pull herself and her daughter away from danger?
Unquiet Heart Soliloquy
In modern-day China, a man has travelled to Shanghai on impulse to meet his online lover Luna, but she refuses to see him and soon disappears without a trace. He tries to forget her by immersing himself in dating apps, and also learns to appreciate the nuances within everyday Chinese life while he adjusts himself to mainland China as a member of the greater overseas Chinese diaspora. As the seasons change he falls in love with a budding photographer named Sofia, but with traces of Luna constantly reappearing in his life, will he ever find a way out of his unquiet predicament?
Unquiet Heart Soliloquy is Dano Chow’s debut novel, a confessional account of one’s turning to dating apps for comfort in times of loneliness, in the hope that one casual outing after another will somehow be enough to fulfil a generational desire for intimacy.
4 Pax to Emptiness
Four people from the tiny, wealthy, hypermodern nation of Singapore visit a remote village in the heart of China. It’s almost forty years since the end of a great famine, hardly known to the world outside China, but psychic echoes of that agony still reverberate through the cosmos. It is the Singaporeans’ task to try to heal that spiritual trauma. When the dead have been universally recognised and mourned for, the ‘hungry ghosts’ will be at peace.
The four are Peter, Katrina, Lumy and Alex: a cripple, a yuppie, a tai-tai and a businessman. On their quest they grow in self-understanding and wisdom, through the guidance of a good spirit named Bezalia.
The story is an amusing closeup of Singaporeans as you’ve never seen them before: four insular people confronting cosmic issues, pragmatists on a spiritual quest. It is also a declaration that transcendence is within everyone’s reach.
Sweet Braised Duck
Kuang was five years old when he first arrived in Singapore from Shantou, China. Reunited with his abusive good-for-nothing grandfather and a new step-grandmother, Kuang and his parents struggled to live with dignity while battling poverty. When he became the eldest brother to seven siblings, greater responsibilities weighed on his shoulders. He gave up his education and worked as a fish porridge hawker assistant to help the family make ends meet. Twists and turns in his life eventually brought him back to his hometown cuisine. How did he derive a unique recipe of his own? How did he realise his dream of becoming a successful Teochew braised duck rice seller?
The Muse and Other Stories
The Muse and Other Stories is a collection of dark stories from the author of Not A Monster and Without Anchovies.
An elderly editor discovers the secret of an author and his muse, and tries to save him from the curse of a vengeful spirit.
The Afterlife is in great trouble, and a young man is enlisted by a high-ranking demon to save it.
A deceased murderer is offered the salvation of his soul, but only if he is willing to commit another murder.
After an encounter with a long-lost childhood friend, a young woman discovers the horrific truth about her father.
A young man is tormented by his unborn child.
These unsettling stories confronts not only the supernatural elements that surround us, but the darkness of our hearts.
The scariest part is often the consequences of the choices made by ordinary persons like us.