Read Around Asia Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.
Best books from Asia (1981)
1131.
Kuwait1132.
The Pact We Made by Layla AlAmmar EN
Description:
Featured on BBC Radio 4's Open Book * Featured on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking * An ELLE Magazine cultural pick * Reviewed in the Observer 'Beautifully written' Joanna Cannon 'Fascinating ... full of personality' Guardian'Brilliant ... What a debut' Pandora Sykes 'How could I explain to her that nothing in my life felt real? That in a country like Kuwait, where everyone knew everything about each other, the most monumental thing to ever happen to me was buried and covered over? For the sake of my reputation, my future, my sister's and cousins; the family honor sat on my little shoulders, so no-... continue
1133.
The book censor’s library by Bothayna Al-Essa EN
Description:
"The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish--allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and c... continue
1134.
An Unlasting Home : A Novel by Mai Al-Nakib EN
Description:
The debut novel from an award-winning short story writer: a multigenerational saga spanning Lebanon, Iraq, India, the United States, and Kuwait that brings to life the triumphs and failures of three generations of Arab women. In 2013, Sara is a philosophy professor at Kuwait University, having returned to Kuwait from Berkeley in the wake of her mother's sudden death eleven years earlier. Her main companions are her grandmother's talking parrot, Bebe Mitu; the family cook, Aasif; and Maria, her childhood ayah and the one person who has always been there for her. Sara's relationship with Kuwait ... continue
1136.
Sámar by Tayeb Alrefai ES
Description:
¿Puede la literatura servirse de los mismos resortes que nos causa quedar expuestos a los demás? En las relaciones por las que apostamos, aquello que ocurre ¿es un espacio real o una realidad cambiante que nuestra mente se empeña en fabricar? ¿Leemos solo lo que nos interesa? Porque los sentimientos a veces se parecen demasiado a una ficción en estado puro, parte de la originalidad de esta obra se cifra en conseguir establecer esa analogía entre el arte de contar y las coordenadas anímicas que nos devoran. […]
1137.
The Hidden Light of Objects by Mai Al-Nakib EN
Description:
A young girl, renamed Amerika in honour of the US role in the liberation of Kuwait, finds her name has become a barometer of her country’s growing hostility towards the West. A self-conscious Palestinian teenager is drawn into a botched suicide bombing by two belligerent classmates. A middle-aged man dying from cancer looks back on his extramarital affairs and the abiding forgiveness of his wife. A Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after being held captive in Iraq for a decade. The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you may see life in the Middle... continue
1138.
The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa EN
Description:
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a rural Palestinian village, is home to the Baraka family - oldest daughter Nazmiyeh, brother Mamdouh, beautiful, dreamy Mariam and their widowed mother. When Israeli forces descend, sending the village up in flames, the family must take the long road to Gaza, in a walk that will test them to their limits. Sixty years later, in America, Mamdouh's granddaughter Nur falls in love with a doctor. Following him to his work in Gaza, she meets Alwan, who will help Nur discover the ties of kinship that transcend distance - and even death. Told with raw humanity, The Blue Be... continue
1139.
Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah EN
Description:
A sardonic, Palestinian Citizen Kane, Sand-Catcher is a dark and thrilling fable about collective memory and the many ways it can be both saved and subverted. Four Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked with writing a profile on one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Confident that the old man will be more than willing to go on record about his experiences, the reporters are nonplussed when they are repeatedly, and obscenely, rebuffed by the man and his grandchildren. This living w... continue
1140.
Silence Is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar EN
Description:
"A woman sits in her apartment in an unnamed English city, absorbed in watching the dramas of her neighbors through their windows. Traumatized into muteness after a long, devastating trip from war-torn Syria to the UK, she believes that she wants to sink deeper into isolation, moving between memories of her absent boyfriend and family and her homeland, dreams, and reality. At the same time, she begins writing for a magazine under the pseudonym "the Voiceless," trying to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it-or revealing anything about herself. Gradually, as the boundaries ... continue