Book Box: Fresh spins
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Follow topic:
SINGAPORE – In this week’s Book Box, The Straits Times explores how authors have given old classics a new face. Buy the books at Amazon
India’s first grimdark fantasy epic Sons Of Darkness long overdue, says author Gourav Mohanty
SINGAPORE – Having been successfully placed in a law firm in his final year of studies in India, Gourav Mohanty suddenly had an entire year ahead of him without needing to seek out internships.
Coincidentally, the 30-year-old had just finished reading A Dance With Dragons, American fantasy author George R.R. Martin’s fifth entry in his A Song Of Ice And Fire series, and was hunting for something similar in the Indian context.
He drew a blank. “Toni Morrison says that if you want to read a book that has not been written yet, it’s your duty to write it. So everything cinematically came together,” the now practising lawyer says over Zoom.
Book review: C.K. Chau offers a rollicking update of Pride And Prejudice in Good Fortune
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, in possession of excess wit, will perennially be raided by authors in want of inspiration.
The good news is that C.K. Chau rises above mere plagiarism to offer – gasp – a shockingly fun update.
Austen’s genteelly impoverished Bennet family gets transplanted from 19th-century Hertfordshire to early 2000s New York Chinatown as the distinctly blue-collar Chens.
The five Chen siblings – “what bad luck, all of them girls” – are born to Victor, who runs a Chinese restaurant, and his wife Jade, an aspiring realtor.
Book review: Jamila Ahmed’s Every Rising Sun an uneven retelling of Arabian Nights
This debut novel by Pakistani-American lawyer Jamila Ahmed places the famous storyteller of the Arabian Nights front and centre. Shaherazade, as her name is spelled in this take, is an inveterate bookworm, a lover and spinner of tales whose own story anchors this feminist reinvention.
The idea is sound but the execution less so as the narrative displays both the strengths and weaknesses of a first novel.
Where Ahmed, a mediaeval Islamic history scholar, excels is in creating the textures of the cosmopolitan and varied Islamic world Shaherazade inhabits.
The original One Thousand And One Nights was an anthology – spanning Middle Eastern, Indian and even African stories – collated by various scholars over the centuries, with the earliest fragment dating back to the ninth century.
Jamila has chosen a more specific time and place to anchor her story: 12th-century Kirman, a Muslim-Persian province then ruled by the Seljuks.
Book review: Chloe Gong’s adult fantasy Immortal Longings does not live up to hype
Immortal Longings, the first book in the Flesh & False Gods fantasy trilogy by Chloe Gong, is something of a letdown. Described as Gong’s “adult epic fantasy debut” and “inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony And Cleopatra” by the publisher, it sadly falls short of the grand scope of epic fantasy.
The New Zealand author became popular with her young adult novels, These Violent Delights (2020) and Our Violent Ends (2021) – a retelling of Romeo And Juliet, set in 1920s Shanghai.
In this new work, the palace in the poverty-stricken kingdom of Talin hosts a deadly annual game in the twin capital cities of San-Er, where competitors with the ability to jump between bodies fight to the death for a chance at wealth.
The Straits Times’ Weekly Bestsellers Sept 3
The Price Of Being Fair tops the non-fiction bestsellers list for the third week in a row.
This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.
