Festive Reads: Chinese New Year

As the Chinese new year approaches (Monday 8th Feb 2016 is The Year of The Monkey), I thought about what I knew of the literature of the region of Asia. (China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea etc) and I realised, not much at all.

MCR - Photo Credit: Pamela Berry 2014

I know that my favourite book by a Korean author is 'The hen who dreamed she could fly' by Sun-mi Hwang, which is a beautiful yet simple story of a hen named Sprout, and her determination to be a mother, my favourite foods have their origins in Asia, and that as a fan of manga and Anime, I am familiar with the works of the collective known as CLAMP, the animation studio Studio Ghibli, and the film distributor Tartan Asia / Tartan Asia Extreme (responsible for the import of many Japanese live-action films and horror films), but I have read very little from that region of the world that was a novel, and not a comic [Manga is the name of the comic strip in Japan & South Korea, it differs greatly in style and format to the newspaper comic strips of England, and the brightly coloured American comics industry of which most people are familiar with, having seen comic adaptation films such as batman, Spiderman, superman or tv shows such as Arrow, Smallville for example]

MCR - Photo credit: Pamela Berry 2015

Of course, there are hundreds of English translations of Asian authors works available, if you know where to look, for this Chinese new year's festive reads, I have chosen:

Snakes & Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara
[synopsis can be read here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snakes-Earrings-Hitomi-Kanehara/dp/009948367X ] 

The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi
[synopsis can be read here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Compound-Eyes-Wu-Ming-Yi/dp/0099575620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454414205&sr=1-1&keywords=the+man+with+the+compound+eyes ]      

I will, of course, update with reviews shortly.