Reads for Asian Heritage Month

May is Asian Heritage Month, and the perfect chance to check out new and new-to-you books by Asian-Canadian writers.

All Books in this Collection

Showing 97–101 of 101 results

  • Valley of the Rats

    Valley of the Rats

    Book nerd Krish hates the outdoors, and camping. But especially germs. When Krish and his father, Kabir, take a camping trip to Ladakh, he convinces himself that they will bond, despite their differences.

    When they’re lost in a bamboo forest, teeming with black rats, and germs, Krish is at an all-time low. His GF (gut feel) and a couple of rats lead them to a hidden village, Imdur, unmarked on any map.

    Krish and his father are allowed to stay, only if they follow rules. But Krish soon realizes the village has an odd custom of worshipping rats. They also have a secret. And so does his dad. Turns out, Krish has a secret too.

    When all the secrets explode into the open, Krish and Kabir are in grave danger. Can Krish overcome his fears and phobias to take the chance offered to him? Or are he and his dad doomed to spend the rest of their lives among rats?

    Krish hates the outdoors, camping, and especially germs. When Krish and his father take a camping trip to Ladakh, he convinces himself they?ll bond, despite their differences.

    When they?re lost in a bamboo forest teeming with black rats, and germs, Krish is at an all-time low. His gut feel and a couple of rats lead them to Imdur, a hidden village.

    Krish and his father are allowed to stay, if they follow the rules. But when Krish and Kabir break the most sacred rule, the Imdura threaten to keep them there forever. Can Krish overcome his fears to save them?

  • What Is Written on the Tongue

    What Is Written on the Tongue

    $24.95

    For readers of Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a transportive historical novel about finding morality in the throes of war and colonizationReleased from Nazi forced labor as World War II ends, 20-year-old Sam is quickly drafted and sent to the island of Java to help regain control of the colony. But the Indonesian independence movement is far ahead of the Dutch, and Sam is thrown into a guerilla war, his loyalties challenged when his squad commits atrocities reminiscent of those he suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Sam falls in love with both Sari and the beautiful island she calls home, but as he loses friends to sniper fire and jungle malady, he also loses sight of what he wants most — to be a good man.

  • Where Things Touch

    Where Things Touch

    $20.00

    Finalist for the 2021 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award

    To devote oneself to the study of beauty is to offer footnotes to the universe for all the places and all the moments that one observes beauty. I can no longer grab beauty by her wrists and demand articulation or meaning. I can only take account of where things touch.

    Part lyric essay, part prose poetry, Where Things Touch grapples with the manifold meanings and possibilities of beauty.

    Drawing on her experiences as a physician-in-training, Orang considers clinical encounters and how they relate to the concept and very idea of beauty. Such considerations lead her to questions about intimacy, queerness, home, memory, love, and other aspects of human existence. Throughout, beauty is ultimately imagined as something inextricably tied to care: the care of lovers, of patients, of art and literature, and the various non-human worlds that surround us.

    Eloquent and meditative in its approach, beauty, here, beyond base expectations of frivolity and superficiality, is conceived of as a thing to recover.Where Things Touch is an exploration of an essential human pleasure, a necessary freedom by which to challenge what we know of ourselves and the world we inhabit.

    2021 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award Jury Citation:

    “Tapestry-like in form, Orang’s lyrical poetic essay stitches together an exploration of beauty and aesthetics that is woven with humility and relationality to other. Her immense sense of craft and confidence make for breath stopping moments, over and over, while at the same time filling the senses with powerful and piercing revelation. ‘Reading,’ she writes, ‘is a kind of ecological activity’– and it is a privilege to situate yourself within Orang’s topographies of love.”

     

  • You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.

    You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.

    $20.00

    Finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction
    Finalist for the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award

    Longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2021
    Globe and Mail Best Book Debut of 2020

    A young translator living in Toronto frequently travels abroad—to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo—often with his unnamed lover. In restaurants and hotel rooms, the couple begin telling folk tales to each other, perhaps as a way to fill the undefined space between them. Theirs is a comic and enigmatic relationship in which emotions are often muted and sometimes masked by verbal play and philosophical questions, and further complicated by the woman’s frequent unexplained disappearances.

    You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King’s debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Canadian literature.

  • You Cannot Turn Away

    You Cannot Turn Away

    $24.95

    This book provides, for the first time, a bilingual edition of poetry by R Cheran. These 40 poems cover a range of experiences, including love, war, despair, hope, and diaspora. Cheran is considered one of the finest contemporary poets in Tamil. Both modernist and unfailingly lyrical, his work is a remarkable blend of tradition and innovation. The forty poems in this volume have been translated and introduced by Chelva Kanaganayakam.