PositivePloughsharesMa, a fierce critic of Xi Jinping’s regime who currently lives in exile in London with his wife and translator Flora Drew, satirically takes the idea of brainwashing even further—why stop with the conscious mind? ... While these satirical descriptions of modern China are ultimately entertaining, China Dream’s strengths lie in its description of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution—Ma Jian has a Proustian sensibility with the brutal eye of Isaac Babel.
Mathangi Subramanian
RaveThe BelieverThe book’s strength lies in Subramanian’s detailed portrayals of a diverse array of lives ... Subramanian never rushes; instead, she lingers in the dynamics of self-exploration, religion, and family ... A People’s History does more than just showcase the girls’ lives. Subramanian seems suspicious of that kind of showcasing ... Subramanian does not allow the observer to stand back and gawk. The novel tenderly guides the reader into and through the struggles of lives lived at the margins, with a sensitivity to experience that can’t be reduced to an apolitical and static image of slum life. If anything, Subramanian deftly explores what political solidarity can look like ... A People’s History of Heaven does not reduce its characters to dozens of fists raised in the air, but instead gives a full account of the extraordinary lives that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the wreckage of a wealthy city, ready to fight against the bulldozers upon the horizon.
Sayaka Murata, Trans. by Ginny Tapley Takemori
RaveThe MillionsSayaka Murata’s brilliant Convenience Store Woman can be read as a meditation on the world of personal branding ... It’s a sign of excellent literature to be able to effortlessly hold up multiple interpretations at once. Murata’s book is no exception: It’s all of these things while also rendering an artful grotesque of modern personal branding ... That voice, with the flattened tone of a test of the emergency broadcast system, is a hallmark of the book ... This is perhaps Murata at her most subversive.
