Shanna & Languages

Of translation, books, languages and me

Book Recommendations | Reviews

Review: Twelve Nights

The novella by Urs Faes, translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle, is possibly the first German translated fiction that I’ve read and it’s simply b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l.

Set during the period between Christmas and Twelfth Night, it tells the story of Manfred, returning to his childhood village after 40 years, hoping to seek a reconciliation with his estranged younger brother Sebastian after a huge falling out over the inheritance of the family farm.

The festive season is a joyous period for some, but for others, it’s a period that reminds them of fraught relationships, estranged families and a sense of lingering loss and regret.

The prose is hauntingly beautiful, conveyed through Jamie Lee Searle’s exquisite translation. You can easily tell that there’s great care being taken for the work by both the author and translator, and there’s just so many beautiful turns of phrases. It can be a quick read, but I found myself slowing down to savor each and every line. The blend of nature, folklore, religion, traditional tales and superstition is captivating and I will myself to slow down and take in each and every single word.

In particular, the descriptions of the wintry landscape was evocative and makes for a wonderfully atmospheric read.

I could almost see the snowy landscape, feel the bleakness, the cold and it was as if I had been transported to Europe’s Black Forest, a place where I’ve never set foot in. I’ve only seen fluttering of snow in Korea and even as I read this in sunny Singapore, I could slip in so effortlessly into the wintry depths of the novella.

I paired it with this Spotify playlist.

A story told, a story from the past, would never truly fade once it had moved someone. The act of remembering, of reading, was like a return, a homecoming into a story. He was never closer to himself than in the remembered and read

This is my favorite quote from the novella. There’s aplenty.

I borrowed a copy from the library, but I’m thinking of getting it for my bookshelf. I’ll definitely want to read this again.

Get it here.

Review: Singa-Pura-Pura

I love speculative fiction for its not-real-but-still-real vibes and the stark contrast of a futuristic world grounded in current reality makes the issues feel even more sombre. Some things in human communities would never change. 

I particularly enjoy spec fiction that are satire or social commentary; a challenge or reimagination of the status quo, steeped in cultural associations or based on a particular society. I’m pretty new to the genre, having (re-)discovered it through a couple of translated Korean spec fiction, so I was super excited to dive into this collection of homegrown Malay speculative fiction. 

I’m terrible at reviewing short stories, because there’s too many and I feel like I’m going to do them an injustice. So I’ll pick out 3 of my favourites: 

Mother Techno: A woman’s conversations with an AI-based voice assistant to communicate with her mother (who only speaks Bahasa) and the worries about her fertility. There’s a twist at the end, and I find it a particularly poignant piece on the pressures on women in society, and intergenerational communication. 

Gold, Paper and Bare Bones: 10,000 points guarantee a comfortable retirement, and that’s the goal that everyone works toward. A blue-collared worker does the same, changing jobs along the way for a better chance to earn more points, but just 50 points shy from his goal, he gets killed in a workplace accident. Makes you wonder what we are really working for. 

Isolated Future #2 MacRitchie Treetops: There’s an abandoned housing estate in the middle of the forest, where a community has now formed. A researcher interviews them on their communication system, built from coexistence with insects in the forest. I love how the story questions the role of efficiency in systems and how the community embrace inefficient activity as a meaningful way to co-exist. 

My favourite quote is also from that story.

A part of me wishes to send a drone or a virtual assistant to run tasks for me (…)So I can unslave myself from undesirable constellations, be completely inefficient and lose myself in whatever wormhole of self-entertainment I’d like to find myself in.

Sounds like a dream. 

Translated literature is rich in cultural nuances and it’s a bridge for me to better understand a different culture or society. I love how certain Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic terms or phrases in the book, particularly those with cultural associations, are left untranslated and readers are made to either guess the meaning from the context, or to refer to the very helpful glossary at the back. I definitely learnt things from the glossary.

When reading translated fiction, I don’t want everything to be reframed in a way the English reader would comprehend, but rather, I want to actively engage the text and understand the differences. I want to guess, to find out, to read up and to understand. 

As a member of the majority race in Singapore, there are few things that I would struggle to understand. English is the common language, and I could just fall back on Mandarin if the need arises. But reading the book gives me a taste of being in the minority this time, and it also makes me reflect on a lot of things that I’ve probably taken for granted, and my own lack of understanding of Singapore beyond my (Chinese) frame. 

I like it when reading throws up questions beyond the stories and make me think about my identity, perspectives and society at large. A great read, and I wish to see more anthologies of short stories from Singapore.

Can we also take a minute to appreciate the cover?! I love how there’s a page dedicated explaining the illustration and how it incorporates elements in the stories. I had a fun time trying to figure out what’s from where. 

Get yours at Ethos Books. 

[Review] Like Spilled Water

I picked up this book by Jennie Liu because I was intrigued by the title Like Spilled Water, and I immediately thought of the Chinese saying 嫁出去的女儿，泼出去的水, literally translated as “a married daughter is like spilled water”. I wasn’t wrong. 

The story centres around Na, a vocational school student in China’s countryside, when her life is suddenly turned upside down by her younger brother’s death. She travels to the city, where her parents live an extremely frugal life while pouring all their money and energies into her brother’s education. She’s appalled to find that despite being the one with all the opportunities, he took his life with rat poison when he does badly in the national college entrance examination gaokao (高考). But having spent years apart and struggling with jealousy and the unfairness of it all, she finds it hard to grief. Her life falls apart when her mother tells her to stop school and get a job at a metal factory, and caretaker duties of her grieving and drunk father falls on her shoulders. She gets a sudden marriage proposal from her childhood friend, and as she tries to piece together truth behind her brother’s death, she has to decide what she wants for herself. 

It’s refreshing to see English YA novels set in places and cultures that are less familiar to the Anglophone reader. It highlights several key social issues in China and blends them into a riveting read. Issues such as the one child policy, feminism, education & marriage, LGBT+ are discussed through the lens of the Chinese culture. Throughout the novel, the characters’ feeling of being constantly trapped really gets to me, and I keep thinking that if I was born somewhere else or in a different generation, perhaps I would have also gone through the same struggles.

And that sure hits home. 

Review: Love in the Big City

Wow, just wow. There’s something about Love in the Big City that just makes you glued to it and I read it in two sittings (I’m human, I need sleep). It also cured me of my laziness when it comes to writing book reviews. Right after finishing the last page, I feel so compelled to type out jumbled thoughts on why I love love love the book so much, hoping to make some sense of why I’m so attracted to it.

Love in the Big City is Sang Young Park‘s English-language debut. This book has such a magnetic personality, only a translator who is equally cool and charismatic can make it work. I’ve always been captivated by translator Anton Hur‘s voice in his translations, and it just shines through in this book. There are many snarky lines that I love and highlighted in the e-book and gosh, some are just gold.

There’s something about living vicariously through flawed characters that are so open and honest about their thoughts, whether it’s in the narration or in the dialogue. The narrator Mr Park (also sometimes referred to as Mr Young) takes the words out of my mouth sometimes, and I marvel at how he dares to say things that I’ve always thought (but not voice out).

I also love how the book is so raw and real when it comes to families. I don’t know about others, but at least people around me (including myself) don’t openly discuss family and growing up, I felt like I was living in a fantasy world where everyone else’s families are “normal”, for lack of a better word. Mr Park’s relations with his mother truly hit home for me, especially the part about how he truly wants an apology from his mother and that his acute awareness that it’s not going to come.

Beyond the emotional rollercoaster—from the highs of snarky retorts to the lows of breakups and loss—that the novel brings, there are also many important issues nestled within. Youth unemployment, homophobia, alcoholism, to name a few.

One thing I love about ebooks is that it’s easy to see what I’ve highlighted and bookmarked, and this novel contains more highlights that my textbooks.

This is my favorite line in the book.

Because, whatever it was or wasn’t, you were you.

It takes so much for a person to tell that to someone else, and I hope I would one day meet someone who I would say that to.

A couple of other personal favorites.

To me, love is a thing you can’t stop when you’re caught up in it, a brief moment you can escape from only after it turns into the most hideous thing imaginable when you distance yourself from it.

An excess of self-awareness was a disease in itself

There are many many more (snarky) lines I love, but will keep them to myself and for you to discover the gold.

Kudos to Tilted Axis Press who emailed print subscribers with the ebook link 🙂 It’s just so nice to get a chance to read it hot off the press. If not, I would have been hounding my mum (who’s in charge of getting the mail) every day.

I still can’t wait for the physical copy to come and go on the ride once more. Definitely looking forward to seeing more of Park’s work in translation.

Synopsis from Tilted Axis Press

You’re in for a treat with Love in the Big City – energetic, joyful, and moving, this novel depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after.

matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they suppress their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and freezer-chilled Marlboro Reds. Yet in time even Jaehee settles down, leaving Young alone to care for his ailing mother and find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.

Purchase links

Titled Axis Press (UK) | Grove Atlantic (US)

While you are at it, I highly recommend the Tilted Axis yearly subscription. I subscribed to both the 2020 and 2021 editions. I was late in getting the 2020 one, which is kinda great, cos they will send the whole year’s books at one shot. Nothing beats having 6-7 books at your doorstep at one go. But I’m also enjoying having the books trickling one by one as they are published this year 🙂 Love in the Big City is part of the 2021 sub!

Review: A Good True Thai

Learning Thai has made me very interested to find out more about the country, history and way of life. At my current beginner stage, I’m learning how to ask for prices and asking for directions, and the textbooks I’m using doesn’t provide much information too. So I’ve turned to media and entertainment, and more recently, I’m on a lookout for good English novels on Thailand and Thai translated fiction, seeing how I can’t read Thai novels yet. I regretted starting on Korean and Japanese translated fiction way too late into learning the language, as I’ve gained so much knowledge and that was different from simply reading non-fiction books on history/culture.

A Good True Thai by Sunisa Manning was a random find in the library and I’m so glad I picked it up. Set in the 1970s against the backdrop of Thailand’s democracy movement, the novel follows the friendship, love and political activism of three young friends: Dek, of noble blood; Chang, a smart boy from the slums; and Lek, a Chinese immigrant with radical ideals.

The novel explores various themes such as class and privilege as the three friends each hold on to their political ideals of how to enact change in their country and at times clash because of their differing views and backgrounds. I love how nuanced the characterisations are, and that many times, it’s more complicated than discerning right from wrong. Hope and helplessness exist in tandem in the novel as the three friends struggle in face of backlash and fear of repercussions, but yet their fierce conviction and fighting spirit keep them going, even when they have to make the difficult decision to leave their family to enter the forests to join the Communists.

It is a compelling read and I only wished that I had started early in the morning so that I can read it in one sitting. I love how the novel does not over-explain, nor translate, and a lot of times, I find myself googling the cultural, socio-political and historical contexts and reference to names, events etc. This makes me engage more actively with the story, and also with the historical and cultural background of Thailand.

There’s a lot going on in the novel, and sometimes it’s hard to balance between focusing on the characters and their stories vs the larger historical backdrop. Yet, the novel manages to weave them together in a sweeping tale.

Definitely a recommended read for those who want to find out more about Thailand.

I am regrettably much ignorant about Southeast Asian history, despite being born and raised in this part of the world. I knew next to nothing about Thailand’s history and I hope that with every book I read, that can change.

Get it at Epigram.