Owl and the Japanese Circus Kristi Charish Simon & Schuster Release Date: January 13, 2015 ISBN 978-1-4767-9499-0 Alix Hiboux is a thief, specializing in antiquities. Well, thief is a somewhat suggestive term, but she has built a reputation for acquiring ancient artifacts for discerning (and wealthy) clients. It wasn’t always […]
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Haruki Murakami Translated by Philip Gabriel Alfred A. Knopf Publication Date: August 12, 2014 ISBN 978-0-385-35210-9 Once upon a time, there were five very close friends who attended public high school in Nagoya, Japan – three boys and two girls. They did […]
A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki Penguin Books Release Date: December 31, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-670-02663-0 It’s both easy and difficult to describe Ruth Ozeki’s contemporary novel, A Tale for the Time Being. It’s easy to give a simple synopsis: when a tin lunchbox containing a Japanese schoolgirl’s diary […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.