1. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai
2. Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch by Dai Sijie (translated by Ina Rilke; white)
3. Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup
4. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley
5. The Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh

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And what of Paama herself? She said little about the husband she had left almost two years ago, barely enough to fend off the village gossips and deflect her sister’s sneers. She didn’t need to. There was something else about Paama that distracted people’s attention from any potentially juicy titbits of her past. She could cook ( Read more... )

13. The Young Inferno by John Agard and Satoshi Kitamura is a verse retelling of Dante's Inferno embedded in a picture book. I liked Kitamura's stark, black and white, art style but in the art-as-storytelling stakes it seemed to me to lack variety. It also clashed with one of the text's spelled out messages: "My teacher said, 'You've got a point. ( Read more... )

#21: House Divided by Raul Ramos y Sanchez

( House Divided )

2. Sarita Mandanna, Tiger Hills ( Read more... )

1. Bharati Mukherjee, Miss New IndiaAnjali Bose is a small town girl in rural India who has big dreams. Her teacher, an ex-pat American, encourages her to make something of herself by heading to Bangalore, which they both see as the best new city in India. Anjali eventually heads there, and ends up in more trouble than she anticipated ( Read more... )

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

( This review contains spoilers )

#8: Four Reigns by Kukrit Pramoj (Translated by Tulachandra)

( Four Reigns )

#5: Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

( Almanac of the Dead )

14. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of SpicesA sort-of fantasy novel about Tilo, a 'Mistress of Spices'- immortal, mystical women, trained in magic and secret knowledge, sent out into the world to help people. Tilo is sent to Oakland, California, where she slowly becomes personally involved in the lives of the people around her, and begins ( Read more... )