Books in the Voices from Asia series

Provides a portrait of rural peasant life in Japan during the Meiji era.

"An amazing book. There is nothing remotely like it anywhere in the world. I am in awe at the skill with which the many different voices in this collection have been kept alive. It is a terrific and stunningly interesting read."--Wendy Doniger, author of The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade "This is a superb collection, which presents to the English reading public for the first time a literature of great beauty and importance. There is no similar or comparable anthology for any Indian language let alone Telugu. All of the translations of the poems are exquisite and learned. The introduction is both a much needed history of Telugu poetry and also a guide to the aesthetics of Telugu poetry and the art of reading it."--Phyllis Granoff, translator of The Journey: Stories by K.C. Das

In the Japanese labor movement of the early twentieth century, no one captured the public imagination as vividly as Osugi Sakae (1885-1923): rebel, anarchist, and martyr. This work offers a glimpse into a Japanese boy's life at the time of the Sino-Japanese (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese (1904-5) wars.

This historical novel, Encounter (Mannam), by Hahn Moo-Sook, one of Asia's most honored writers, is a story of the resilience in the Korean spirit. It is told through the experiences of Tasan, a high-ranking official and foremost Neo-Confucian scholar at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Because of Tasan's fascination with Western learning, then synonymous with Catholicism, he is exiled to a remote province for 18 years. In banishment he meets people from various social and religious backgrounds-Buddhist monks, peasants, shamans-whom he would not otherwise have met. The events of Tasan's life are effectively used to depict the confluence of Buddhist, Neo-Confucian, Taoist, and shamanistic beliefs in traditional Korea.A subplot involves three young sisters, the daughters of a prominent Catholic aristocrat, and affords the reader vivid glimpses into Yi-dynasty women's lives, particularly those of palace ladies, scholars' wives, tavern keepers, shamans, and slaves. In contrast to the long-held Confucian stereotype of female subservience, this story illustrates the richness of women's contribution to Korean culture and tradition.Encounter's detailed narrative provides a broad and informed view of nineteenth-century Korea, making it a highly useful book for courses on Korean literature and society. It will also be an engaging read for lovers of historical fiction.

An anthology of translated short stories by Japanese writers captures the city of Tokyo through most of the twentieth century - a period of war, bombing, urbanization, and modernization, in short, constant change that has altered and continues to alter the very geography of the city.

While the natural splendor of Nepal has been celebrated in many books, very little of the substantial body of Nepali literature has appeared in English translation. Himalayan Voices provides admirers of Nepal and lovers of literature with their first glimpse of the vibrant literary scene in Nepal today.An introduction to the two most developed genres of modern Nepali literature-poetry and the short story-this work profiles eleven of Nepal's most distinguished poets and offers translations of more than eighty poems written from 1916 to 1986. Twenty of the most interesting and best-known examples of the Nepali short story are translated into English for the first time by Michael Hutt. All provide vivid descriptions of life in twentieth-century Nepal.Although the days when Nepali poets were regularly jailed for their writings have passed, until 1990 the strictures of various laws governing public security and partisan political activity still required writers and publishers to exercise a certain caution. In spite of these conditions, poetry in Nepal remained the most vital and innovative genre, in which sentiments and opinions on contemporary social and political issues were frequently expressed.While the Nepali short story adapted its present form only during the early 1930s, it has rapidly developed a surprisingly high degree of sophistication. These stories offer insights into the workings of Nepali society: into caste, agrarian relations, social change, the status of women, and so on. Such insights are more immediate than those offered by scholarly works and are conveyed by implication and assumption rather than analysis and exposition.This book should appeal not only to admirers of Nepal, but to all readers with an interest in non-Western literatures. Himalayan Voices establishes for the first time the existence of a sophisticated literary tradition in Nepal and the eastern Himalaya.

With this translation of the 1929 novel Rainbow(Hong), one of China's most influential works of fiction is at last available in English.Rainbow chronicles the political and social disruptions in China during the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by the iconoclasm of the "e;May Fourth Movement,"e; the heroine, Mei, embarks on a journey that takes her from the limitations of the traditional family to a discovery of the new, "e;modern"e; values of individualism, sexual equality, and political responsibility. The novel moves with Mei from the conservative world of China's interior provinces down the Yangtze River to Shanghai, where she discovers the turbulent political environment of China's most modern city.Mao Dun writes with the conviction of one who has lived through the events he is describing. Rainbow provides a moving introduction to the contradictions inherent in the simultaneous quest for personal freedom and national strengthening. Vividly evocative of the period in which it was written, it is equally relevant to the China of today.

In this tale, Honda Katsuichi reconstructs the life of an Ainu woman living on the northern island of Japan over 500 years ago. Harukar's story is set in the centuries before the mainland Japanese nearly destroyed the way of life depicted here.

Thailand's foremost writers about women are brought together in this collection of 11 short stories and excerpts from five novels. The selection shows the many ways fiction has mirrored the lives of Thai women over the 20th century.