Let us take you on a quick trip around the world via these four selected books that are currently on our shelves here at Stanfords:
by Han Fan, translated by Jeremy Tiang
£13.99
Set in: Malaysia
From 1976 to 1989, Hai Fan was part of the guerrilla forces of the Malayan Communist Party. These short stories are inspired by his experiences during his thirteen years in the rainforest.
Struggling through an arduous trek, two comrades pine for each other but don’t know how to declare their love; a woman who has annoyed all her comrades finally wins their approval when she finds a mythical mousedeer; improvising around the lack of ingredients, a perpetually hungry guerrilla makes delicious cakes from cassava and elephant fat. The rainforest may be a dangerous place where death awaits, but so do love, desire and hope.
Delicious Hunger is a book about the moments in and between warfare, when hunger is so palpable it can be tasted, and the natural world becomes an extension of the body. Deftly translated by Jeremy Tiang, Hai Fan’s stories are about a group of people who chose to fight for a better world and, in the process, built their own.
by Claire Keegan
£10
Set in: Ireland
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
It is, in essence, an exploration of the best and the worst of what it is to be human. Much lies here within what seems a simple tale. It strikes to the heart.
Claire Keegan’s book Small Things Like These was a Sunday Times Bestseller, shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and made into a film starring Cillian Murphy.
[insert Martyr image]
by Kaveh Akbar
£16.99
Set in: USA
A transcendental debut novel from a multiple prize-winning poet; a story of mothers and sons, empires, and what it might mean to strive for love in a world that feels consumed by loss.
Cyrus Shams is lost.
Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life.
When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter – he finds himself once again caught up in the story of his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed. As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.
Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
by Madeleine Thien
Set in: China
An epic novel about the far-reaching effects of China’s revolutionary history, told through the stories of two interlinked musical families.
In Canada in 1991, ten-year-old Marie and her mother invite a guest into their home. Ai- Ming has fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests.
As her relationship with Marie deepens, Ai-Ming tells the story of her family in revolutionary China, from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao’s ascent to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. And she speaks of three musicians – the shy and brilliant composer Sparrow, the violin prodigy Zhuli, and the enigmatic pianist Kai – who struggled during China’s relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to. Their fates reverberate through the years, with deep and lasting consequences for Ai-Ming – and for Marie.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing magnificently brings to life one of the most significant political regimes of the 20th century and its traumatic legacy.