And the Big Bad Wolf is back! Manila has become an obligatory stop for one of the biggest book fairs in the region. Things have changed, as they always do. The fair is usually hosted in February and is usually held at the World Trade Center. However, last year, it was held at PICC and this year, it has found a new home again, now at the Glorietta Activity Center. for those who want to dig in the fun – I heard that the weekends were packed – you have one more day to check out the books on sale.
As for me, there are only two sections I frequent: General and Literature. I saw some familiar titles and names. To be honest, I tried to hold back because I still have several unread books on my bookshelves. But the temptation is too great. I saw titles I wouldn’t normally see at the local bookstore. So there goes my restraint. My purchases this year are a mix of unfamiliar and familiar writers. Without further ado, here are all my Big Bad Wolf haul. I guess I can say I was able to restrain myself because I bought fewer books than usual. Happy reading everyone!
Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Publishing Date: 2008 (1818)
No. of Pages: 249
Synopsis:
Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her social circle and Anne finds her old feelings for him reignited. However, when they meet again Wentworth behaves as if they are strangers and seems more interested in her friend Louisa. With humour, insight and tenderness, Jane Austen tells the story of a love that endures the tests of time and society.
Title: Mansfield Park
Author: Jane Austen
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Publishing Date: 2008 (1814)
No. of Pages: 488
Synopsis:
Fanny Price’s rich relatives offer her a home at Mansfield Park so that she can be properly brought up. However, Fanny’s childhood is a lonely one as she is never allowed to forget her place. Her only ally is her cousin Edmund. But when the glamorous and exciting Henry and Mary Crawford arrive in the area, Edmund starts to grow close to Mary, and Fanny finds herself dealing with feelings she has never experienced before.
Title: The House of Rust
Author: Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publishing Date: 2021
No. of Pages: 252
Synopsis:
When Aisha’s fisherman father goes missing, she takes to the sea on a skeleton boat to rescue him. Guided by a talking scholar’s cat, who sparks her interest in the mysterious House of Rust, she encounters three monsters hidden beneath the waves. All Aisha wants is for things to return to normal. But a showdown with the father of all sharks looms, and at home, things only grow stranger. A fabulist coming-of-age tale set amid the diasporic Hadrami culture in Mombasa, Kenya, The House of Rust is a standout debut by a marvelous new voice.
Title: The Year of the Runaways
Author: Sunjeev Sahota
Publisher: Picador
Publishing Date: 2015
No. of Pages: 468
Synopsis:
Three young men from very different backgrounds come together in a journey from India to England, where they hope to begin something new. To support their families, where they can, to build their future, to show their worth, to escape the past. They have almost no idea of what awaits them.
In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield, Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his life in Bihar. Avtar has a secret that binds him to the unpredictable Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa-wife in a flat on the other side of town, whose cupboards are full of her husband’s clothes, in case the immigration men surprise her with a visit.
She is Narinder, and her story is the most surprising of them all.
Utterly absorbing and beautiful in its scope, The Year of the Runaways is written with compassion and touched by grace. As Tochi, Avtar, Randeep and Narinder negotiate their dreams, desires and shocking realities, as their histories continue to pull at them, as the seasons pass, what emerges is a novel of overwhelming humanity: one which asks how far we can decide our own course in life, and what we should do for love, for faith, and for family.
Title: Dream of Ding Village
Author: YAN Lianke
Translator (from Chinese): Cindy Carter
Publisher: Grove Press
Publishing Date: 2011 (2005)
No. of Pages: 341
Synopsis:
Officially censored in China, and long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village is a deeply moving and beautifully written novel, his most important work yet. Based on a real-life scandal in eastern China and drawing on three years of undercover work, it is a tale of one family in a poor village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood banks. While one son rises to the top of the Party by exploiting the situation, another is infected. Dream of Ding Village is an extraordinary critique of China’s ruthless path to development and what happens to those who get in the way.
Title: Confessions of the Lioness
Author: Mia Couto
Translator (from Portuguese): David Brookshaw
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publishing Date: 2015 (2012)
No. of Pages: 192
Synopsis:
Told through two haunting interwoven diaries, Mia Couto’s Confession of the Lioness reveals the enigmatic world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting and killing the women who live there.
Mariamar, a young woman from the village, finds her life thrown into chaos just as the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, the outsider Archangel Bullseye, arrives in town. Mariamar’s sister was recently killed in one of the attacks, and her father has imprisoned her in his home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel attempts to track the lionesses out in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to these predators than meets the eye, he slowly starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more and more dangerous, until it’s no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their culture, and the animal predators closing in, it becomes clear that the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all but rather spirits conjured by the ancient witchcraft of the women themselves.
Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women’s oppression, Confession of the Lionesses combines reality, superstition, and magic realism in an atmospheric, gripping novel.
Title: The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman
Author: Andrzej Szczypiorski
Translator (from Polish): Klara Glowczewska
Publisher: Grove Press
Publishing Date: September 2022 (1988)
No. of Pages: 274
Synopsis:
A masterful novel that was a huge bestseller in Europe, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is a testament to the power of literature. Now with an introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who named it her “favorite book no one else has heard of” in the New York Times, the novel follows Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1943m who possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: blue eyes and blond hair. With these features, and a set of false papers, she slips out of the ghetto, passing as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street and drags her off to the Gestapo. At times a dark lament, at others a sly and sardonic thriller, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma’s arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue as the last of Warsaw’s Jews are about to meet their deaths in the burning ghetto.
Title: The Dwarfs
Author: Harold Pinter
Publisher: Grove Weidenfeld
Publishing Date: 1990
No. of Pages: 183
Synopsis:
The Dwarfs is the only novel Harold Pinter has written in his long and distinguished career. Originally completed in the early 1950s, then revised in 1989, it describes the intertwined lives and concerns of four young Londoners in postwar Britain. Through the evolution of their tumultuous and destructive friendship, Pinter explores the ways in which ordinary lives are molded by the limitations and boundaries of sexuality, intimacy, and morality, as he illuminates the profound truths that exist in seemingly everyday occurrences. Funny, vivid, and haunting, The Dwarfs is a brilliantly intriguing novel by a writer whose imagination has shaped our lives.
Harold Pinter is, in the words of The New York Times “one of the most important playwrights of our day.” Among his best-known plays are The Homecoming, The Caretaker, The Birthday Party, and No Man’s Land. He has also written for radio, television, and film, and his screenplays include The Handmaid’s Tale, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and the adaptation of his own play Betrayal. He lives in London.
The Pine-Scented Chronicles 