Voices from Asia – serie

Until now the large body of socially focused Bengali literature has remained little known to Western readers. This collection includes some of the finest examples of Bengali short stories--stories that reflect the turmoil of a changing society traditionally characterized by rigid hierarchical structures of privilege and class differentiation. Written over a span of roughly ninety years from the early 1890s to the late 1970s, the twenty stories in this collection represent the work of five authors. Their characters, drawn from widely varying social groups, often find themselves caught up in tumultuous political and social upheaval.The reader encounters Rabindranath Thakur's extraordinarily spirited and bold heroines; Manik Bandyopadhyay's peasants, laborers, fisherfolk, and outcastes; and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's rural underclass of snake-charmers, corpse-handlers, stick-wielders, potters, witches, and Vaishnava minstrels. Mahasweta Devi gives voice to the semi-landless tribals and untouchables effectively denied the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution; Hasan Azizul Huq depicts the plight of the impoverished of Bangladesh.

While the natural splendor of Nepal has been celebrated in many books, very little of the substantial body of Nepali literature has appeared in English translation. Himalayan Voices provides admirers of Nepal and lovers of literature with their first glimpse of the vibrant literary scene in Nepal today. An introduction to the two most developed genres of modern Nepali literature--poetry and the short story--this work profiles eleven of Nepal's most distinguished poets and offers translations of more than eighty poems written from 1916 to 1986. Twenty of the most interesting and best-known examples of the Nepali short story are translated into English for the first time by Michael Hutt. All provide vivid descriptions of life in twentieth-century Nepal. Although the days when Nepali poets were regularly jailed for their writings have passed, until 1990 the strictures of various laws governing public security and partisan political activity still required writers and publishers to exercise a certain caution.In spite of these conditions, poetry in Nepal remained the most vital and innovative genre, in which sentiments and opinions on contemporary social and political issues were frequently expressed. While the Nepali short story adapted its present form only during the early 1930s, it has rapidly developed a surprisingly high degree of sophistication. These stories offer insights into the workings of Nepali society: into caste, agrarian relations, social change, the status of women, and so on. Such insights are more immediate than those offered by scholarly works and are conveyed by implication and assumption rather than analysis and exposition. This book should appeal not only to admirers of Nepal, but to all readers with an interest in non-Western literatures. Himalayan Voices establishes for the first time the existence of a sophisticated literary tradition in Nepal and the eastern Himalaya.

Acknowledging no god but the corporate good, the shoshamen--high-powered professionals within Japan's integrated trading companies--serve as the unrelenting cogs of an economic machine. Or do they? Shoshaman takes us inside the world of Japan Inc. to explore the daily lives of the people who inhabit it. Written by a senior executive in a major sogo shosha, this absorbing novel reveals, as no textbook can, the strategies required to win the race to the top. It also makes painfully clear the ethical and psychological choices that such a race demands. The cast of characters is as varied as the corporate world itself, from the devoted Ojima, who has been passed over by the company, to the spirited Masako, who strikes out on her own. The hero, Nakasato Michio, finds that the road to success is long and perilous, as he tries to satisfy his ambitions while remaining faithful to his values. First published as Kigyoka sarariman in 1986 and made into a prize-winning television miniseries in 1988, the book has been acclaimed in Japan for the verisimilitude of its characters and situations.It offers a clear understanding of what it is like--in human terms--to survive and perhaps succeed within the confines of the Japanese corporation.

With this translation of the 1929 novel "Rainbow (Hong)", one of China's most influential works of fiction is at last available in English. "Rainbow" chronicles the political and social disruptions in China during the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by the iconoclasm of the 'May Fourth Movement', the heroine, Mei, embarks on a journey that takes her from the limitations of the traditional family to a discovery of the new, 'modern' values of individualism, sexual equality, and political responsibility. The novel moves with Mei from the conservative world of China's interior provinces down the Yangtze River to Shanghai, where she discovers the turbulent political environment of China's most modern city. Mao Dun writes with the conviction of one who has lived through the events he is describing. "Rainbow" provides a moving introduction to the contradictions inherent in the simultaneous quest for personal freedom and national strengthening. Vividly evocative of the period in which it was written, it is equally relevant to the China of today.

This historical novel, Encounter (Mannam), by Hahn Moo-Sook, one of Asia's most honored writers, is a story of the resilience in the Korean spirit. It is told through the experiences of Tasan, a high-ranking official and foremost Neo-Confucian scholar at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Because of Tasan's fascination with Western learning, then synonymous with Catholicism, he is exiled to a remote province for 18 years. In banishment he meets people from various social and religious backgrounds--Buddhist monks, peasants, shamans--whom he would not otherwise have met. The events of Tasan's life are effectively used to depict the confluence of Buddhist, Neo-Confucian, Taoist, and shamanistic beliefs in traditional Korea. A subplot involves three young sisters, the daughters of a prominent Catholic aristocrat, and affords the reader vivid glimpses into Yi-dynasty women's lives, particularly those of palace ladies, scholars' wives, tavern keepers, shamans, and slaves. In contrast to the long-held Confucian stereotype of female subservience, this story illustrates the richness of women's contribution to Korean culture and tradition.Encounter's detailed narrative provides a broad and informed view of nineteenth-century Korea, making it a highly useful book for courses on Korean literature and society. It will also be an engaging read for lovers of historical fiction.

In the Japanese labor movement of the early twentieth century, no one captured the public imagination as vividly as Osugi Sakae (1885-1923): rebel, anarchist, and martyr. Flamboyant in life, dramatic in death, Osugi came to be seen as a romantic hero fighting the oppressiveness of family and society. Osugi helped to create this public persona when he published his autobiography (Jijoden) in 1921-22. Now available in English for the first time, this work offers a rare glimpse into a Japanese boy's life at the time of the Sino-Japanese (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese (1904-5) wars. It reveals the innocent - and not-so-innocent - escapades of children in a provincial garrison town and the brutalizing effects of discipline in military preparatory schools. Subsequent chapters follow Osugi to Tokyo, where he discovers the excitement of radical thought and politics. Byron Marshall rounds out this picture of the early Osugi with a translation of his "Prison Memoirs" (Gokuchuki), originally published in 1919. This essay, one of the world's great pieces of prison writing, describes in precise detail the daily lives of Japanese prisoners, especially those incarcerated for political crimes.

Nagatsuka Takashi's novel "The Soil", published in Japan in 1910, provides a moving and sensitive but unsentimental portrait of rural peasant life in Japan during the Meiji era. The community described is the author's native place, and the characters whose lives are described in vivid detail over a period of years are drawn from life.

Kepner's selection shows the many ways fiction has mirrored the lives of Thai women over the twentieth century. The spectrum is broad, encompassing the young and the old, the rural and the cosmopolitan, the privileged and the poor. Some writers address previously unacceptable themes: female sexuality, spousal abuse, gender oppression. Others display a scintillating sense of humor. They touch on many themes--injustice, the heartlessness of society, loneliness, the difficult choices that life presents. Susan Kepner's lyrical, faithful translations preserve the tenor and resonances of these voices, many of which will be heard for the first time by English-speaking readers.

This anthology of translated short stories by Japanese writers captures the city of Tokyo through most of the twentieth century - a period of war, bombing, urbanization, and modernization, in short, constant change that has altered and continues to alter the very geography of the city. The eighteen stories, varying from literary sketches to popular fiction, picture everyday life in different parts of the city - in its nightclubs, department stores, bars, homes, and working-class neighborhoods. For the tourist, armchair traveler, or long-time resident, this book is a literary excursion into Tokyo illuminated by the evocative, and often ironic, words of its writers. These expertly translated stories range from reflections on deaths in his family by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, the venerated master of the short story, written just before his own suicide; to a story of an all-too-brief affair in the old part of Tokyo by Hayashi Fumiko; and, to an unsettling tale of high politics and possible blackmail by the ever-popular Mishima Yukio. This volume also introduces the work of Ikeda Michiko and Inaba Mayumi, who have never been translated into English before.Lawrence Rogers's introduction leads us on an intimate meditative stroll through the city's various districts - from the marble and mahogany of the business district to the skid row of San'ya - describing each in delightful vignettes. As an introduction to Tokyo and to the literary imaginations it has inspired, this engaging book will reveal something new about the nature of Japan's capital to all who wander through its pages.

A Poem at the Right Moment collects, and preserves, poems—called catus—that have circulated orally for centuries in South India. The poems are remarkable for their wit and precision, their lyrical insight on the commonplace, their fascination with sensual experience, and their exploration of the connection between language and desire. Taken together the catus offer a penetrating critical vision and an understanding of the classical traditions of Telugu, Tamil, and Sanskrit.Each poem is presented in a contemporary English translation along with the Indian-language original. An introduction and a concluding essay explore in detail the stories and texts that comprise the catu system.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.