T A I W A N
The luckiest people in the world? No, just the most talented according to Thomas Friedman. Read Friedman's NYT Article: Pass the Books. Hold the Oil.
The Butcher's Wife
A 1930s Shanghai case of a woman who murdered her husband inspired Li Ang to write this deep and harrowing novel that was an outrageous literary sensation. In a small coastal Taiwanese town, the pig butcher's brutality towards his new young wife knows no bounds. She becomes scorned by her neighbors who condemn her for screaming aloud. Lin Shin, isolated, despairing, is finally driven to madness and kills him with his own meat cleaver. ""May be the most frightening book ever written about women oppressed by men""--Los Angeles Times.
The Third Son: A Novel
In the middle of a terrifying air raid in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Saburo, the least favored son of a Taiwanese politician, runs through a peach forest for cover. It’s there he stumbles on Yoshiko, whose descriptions of her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise. Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and for years he will try to find her again. When he finally does, she is by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival. In Saburo, author Julie Wu has created an extraordinary character who is determined to fight for everything he needs and wants, from food to education to his first love. A sparkling and moving story, it will have readers cheering for a young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program
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