Literature

'Rebecca' and 'Beloved': Memory and Societal Constraints

Alison Chiu

Both 'Rebecca' and 'Beloved' intricately weave memory into their narratives, highlighting its multifaceted role: as a lens to decipher the present, a haunting force driving towards insanity, and a path leading to redemption. The protagonists, though tethered to different cultural backdrops, universally depict the human struggle of navigating past traumas. Their stories transcend individual experiences, suggesting that personal memories intersect with broader societal narratives, crafting shared histories. This "shared memory" speaks to the interconnectedness of our experiences, reinforcing that while memories are personal, they resonate within a collective consciousness. Thus, memory isn't just a personal voyage but a communal tapestry, urging a collective understanding of past legacies.

Babel

Audrey Xia

Set in an alternate 1830s England, this book is a harsh critique of British imperialism, the hypocrisy of academia and systematic oppression of the minorities. It is meticulously researched (no doubt due to Kuang’s background as an academic), both on the history and culture, and on linguistics and translation, which is the biggest theme of the novel.

Must I Go

Audrey Xia

In this book, an old woman, nearing the end of her life, reflects on her experiences and memories by annotating on the diaries of a dead man, with whom she had a fleeting affair with when she was a young girl. It explores big questions like love, old age, family, generational trauma and much more.

Sputnik Sweetheart

Katrina Arens

This novel explores whether loneliness is borne of not being around others or of being apart from one's self. A novel full of "almosts", it seems that longing can never truly be divorced from true love.

Reading Translated Literature: 'The Odyssey'

Yvonne Tang

In this age when Asian countries have begun to take great strides towards globalization, demand for books translated to and from Asian languages continue to grow. One who has spent a substantial duration of their life in an Asian community may feel, while reading translated English texts, both distant and closely connected with the language being used within a book.

唐詩 : Poems from the Tang Dynasty

Marcus Yeoh

Each dynasty in Ancient China marked alternating periods of unity; each dynasty was unique, thus leaving behind a wide range of unique artefacts that chart the historical development of the country. The Tang Dynasty is well remembered for the era's contributions to poetry, partly the result of Xuanzong's creation of an academy for poets, which helped preserve over 48,900 poems written by well over 2,000 poets of the era.

After Dark

Christine Bunagan

Through using visceral yet beautiful observations, Murakami throws readers into an unknown abyss of turbulent feelings, darkness and melancholia. Although the book is rather short and can be finished in a single sitting, the beauty of the story lies not in its fairly straightforward and insignificant plot elements, but rather the excursion into the mentality and rhythms of night in an isolated city filled with longing.

No Longer human

Max Lee

This novel is one of my favourite books of all time and is filled with dark franticness and insights that parallel Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground". Dazai uses the theme of alienation to create a novel that is almost unbearably "human", evocatively tearing apart the veil of fictions we delude ourselves with to not acknowledge the depths of depravity inherent in reality.

'Girl': Kincaid's Experience Conveyed Through Language

Megan Lee

Kincaid uses a myriad of ways to convey an evocative sense of the young girl’s struggles in navigating social worlds as a female. What is perhaps most striking about her writing is how it reads almost like an exhaustive declaration of the damning expectations imposed on young females, of the complex relationships between each generation, and of the many obstacles a woman must overcome to be respected.

The White Book

Victoria Chew

Han Kang does an exceptional job exploring fragility and vulnerability, reminding us of all that is ephemeral in the world. She skilfully uses the colour white not only as an evocative symbol for her own grief and loss, but uses this meditation of colour to suggest that certain memories remain inviolate to the ravages of time and suffering.

The Memory Police

Tom Startup

What do we become when we forget things? Are we still the same people? What is left of us when all our memories are gone? These are just a few of the deep questions raised by Japanese writer, Yoko Ogawa's intriguing and original novel, 'The Memory Police ', which was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize.

'A Room of One's Own': Woolf and Gendered Constraints

Alice Rothwell

'Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses, possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.’ This eloquent and fiercely critical extract from Virginia Woolf's extended essay ‘A Room of One's Own' articulates an essential conflict between the capabilities of women, and their inability to pursue them under societal constraints, which she demonstrates to be intertwined with the focus of the essay's study: 'Women and Fiction.’

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Megan Lee

Ocean Vuong’s novel takes the form of a young Vietnamese American writer's letter to his illiterate mother — her education having ended at seven, when her school in Vietnam collapsed after an American napalm raid. In his letter, the unnamed narrator combines a series of seemingly unrelated memories, events, and musings in an attempt to convey some inexpressible truth.