Jan TIOLI: non-Western genre fiction

This thread is for discussion of the Jan TIOLI challenge: Read a work of genre fiction from outside Europe/North America (wiki here.

A couple of definitions first: genre fiction includes: crime, sci fi, horror, romance, fantasy, true crime etc.; and "from" a region means both the origin of the author and the setting of the book.

Please feel free to make recommendations for other readers!

As well as reviews of the books read for this challenge, it would be interesting to hear:

1/ How did you choose this book? Does it fit with your normal reading or did you read it for the challenge? How did you come across the book? What attracted you to read it?

2/ What was the impact of it being from a different part of the world? Was it very different from "Western" examples of the same genre, and if so, how? What impression do you have now of the place where it is set?

I'm looking forward to some good recommendations here - there are already some very interesting books on the wiki.

Recommendations

This is a list of authors/books which would fit this category. They will be mostly crime fiction since that's probably the area I know most about - it would be great if anyone had suggestions for other genres.

Crime

Miyuki Miyabe (Japan) - her books also touch on social issues, such as the position of women in Japanese society. The best of hers that I've read is All She Was Worth, which is also about the impact when the economic bubble burst.

Seicho Matsumoto (Japan) - according to Wikipedia, "Seichō's works created a new tradition of Japanese crime fiction. Dispensing with formulaic plot devices such as puzzles, Seichō incorporated elements of human psychology and ordinary life. In particular, his works often reflect a wider social context and postwar nihilism that expanded the scope and further darkened the atmosphere of the genre."

Edogawa Rampo (Japan) - an early Japanese crime writer who adopted this pseudonym because he was inspired by the crime writing of Edgar Allen Poe. He also promoted the novels of Akimitsu Takagi.

Natsuo Kirino (Japan)

Kenzo Kitakata (Japan)

Shuichi Yoshida (Japan)

Qiu Xiaolong (China) - now living in the US, but his books featuring Inspector Chen are an interesting insight into modern Chinese society.

Batya Gur (Israel)

Shamini Flint (Malaysia/Singapore writer, books set all over Southeast Asia)

Boris Akunin (Russia) - period romps

Horror

There's a lot of Japanese horror around - I haven't read much but here are a few authors to look at: Ryu Murakami, Asa Nonami, Yusuke Kishi, Koji Suzuki.

Thriller

Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal - I highly recommend this Bond-esque thriller set in a future India.

To answer my own Q1 - I enjoy reading crime fiction and also tend to buy a fair bit of sci fi; I also like reading books from different parts of the world, so that's probably why I easily found half a dozen books on my shelf which would fit this challenge.

I've already listed these books for this thread:

The Tattoo Murder Case (Japan, crime)
Tokyo Vice (Japan, true crime)
Enma The Immortal (Japan, fantasy)
The Kiss Murder (Turkey, crime)
The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction (India, pulp)

The first two I bought because of good reviews. The third and fourth I found browsing in a bookshop. Enma The Immortal came from a bookshop near me which carries a lot of books from Vertical, a publisher specialising in Japanese books including a wide range of genre. I'd previously read another book from Vertical, The Summer Of The Ubume, which was really interesting if not entirely successful, so I was curious to read some more.

As for The Blaft Anthology Of Tamil Pulp Fiction, I think I was drawn to it after seeing an insanely brilliant film called Quick Gun Murugun, about a Tamil cowboy from 1970s Bollywood films reincarnated into the 1990s where he has to battle an evil corporation intent on making Indians renounce vegetarianism so that they can sell more meat products. It made me very curious about Indian traditions of pulp!

If anyone is interested in historical fiction, there are some good novels set in Mughal India by Indu Sundaresan. The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses and Shadow Princess all lead up to the creation of the Taj Mahal. I"ll be reading Taj, which overlaps with the final book in that quasi-trilogy, by Timeri Murari.

I also may add to this the latest novel by Jassy Mackenzie, a mystery. I have already added the debut novel in a new series by Sudanese writer Parker Bilal, set in his adopted home country of Egypt, and an ARC of an Israeli mystery by an author with whom I'm very unfamiliar.

I'd echo the suggestion of Soho -- they publish a lot of "international" crime fiction, although you'd need to check to make sure the author is a local.

ETA -- I'll be interested to see what you think of Tokyo Vice, as the author has become a friend of mine! He's wrapping up a yakuza biography now, and running something called the Japan Subculture Institute. Oh, and he has become a Buddhist priest of sorts.

>4 Chatterbox: I've read The Twentieth Wife and picked up The Feast of Roses but never got to it, so I might do that one.

Another possible for historical fiction is The Color of Earth by Korean author Dong Hwa Kim. It's a YA graphic novel set in rural Korea and tales the story of a young girl going through puberty while her mother struggles to deal with her widowhood and running a tavern alone. The author shares many Korean sayings and customs, and the drawings are beautiful.

And I just finished reading it today if only I'd waited two more days ;)

I've listed Garry Disher's Kickback which is Australian crime but still part of the Western mindset. So it doesn't really fit the spirit of this challenge, though other Australian crime books have been set in Aboriginal territory.

Are we counting Russia as part of Europe or Asia? I'm asking because I was thinking of reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (historical fiction).

Edit: Yay, I just saw Wandering_star listed a Russian author.

One romance suggestion: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

I'm sorry, I would think Russia itself is part of Europe, though some of the former Soviet Republics are in Asia.

I have a question about definition - setting of the book, the author's nationality, residence? I've just read The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton who is Australian and lives in Brisbane but the novel is mostly set in the UK.

Reposting from the main TIOLI thread:

My intention was to look at non-Western genre fiction, so I think it should be both about the author and the setting. Therefore, Qiu Xiaolong's books would fit because he is native to China and the setting is there - they also fit well with my intention because I think that they are written to give a bit of an insight into China as well as being good detective stories. Colin Cotterill wouldn't because he's a Brit, similarly the Mma Ramotswe series or Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind Up Girl (sf, set in Thailand, US author).

Japanese crime novels are quite fun (although that might not be the best word to describe them) to read, I second the recommendations of Natsuo Kirino, Ryu Murakami, and Koji Suzuki.

I enjoyed Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto and one that someone has already listed, the very bizarre The Tattoo Murder Case.

Thinking about those Japanese crime novels made me start one last night. I'm now reading Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. Thanks for this challenge which pointed me in the direction of that book!

Maybe I should join you on that one - I thought Out was brilliant and bought Grotesque and Real World ages ago.

Yeah, go for it Luci! We'll get the TIOLI point, and I know for sure that I'll finish the book as it started out great.

First review:

Enma The Immortal by Fumi Nakamura

1866. A young rebel samurai has been badly beaten by the hated Tokugawa shogunate police. When a passer-by finds him, he groans, "I don't want to die" - and by doing so he seals his fate, for the passer-by, Baikou, is a tattooist renowned for his powers to tattoo spirit charms. Usually, his customers want the charms to help them stop drinking or to forget a lost love - but as he nears his own death, Baikou has been drawn more and more strongly to the greatest taboo of the art - tattooing an immortality charm. The young man's words are just the encouragement he needs.

As well as giving him supernatural abilities to heal, Baikou passes on his skills to the young man, who takes the name of Enma, the lord and judge of the dead and the character who has been tattooed onto his palm. But immortality has its downsides - you have to move every few years before the neighbours get suspicious that you never age, and falling in love has no hope to lead to anything but heartbreak. Worse still, it turns out that Baikou's previous apprentice made himself immortal - and unlike Enma, he doesn't even bother to struggle with the demon inside him that's keeping him alive. When he discovers that he has a successor, he begins to taunt Enma and threaten those that he loves - at least partly because he knows that Enma is one of the few beings who would be able to kill him. Their struggle lasts through the decades, coming to a climax in the summer of 1945 as Japan burns around them.

I really enjoyed this book, although it's a little hard to put my finger on why. The writing is fairly functional, as are the glimpses of a changing Japan (they are interesting, but tend to be fairly bald - "It had been twenty years since the game called baseball had arrived in Japan"). The themes are a little bit repetitive. And yet, I liked Enma and enjoyed the depiction of his relationships with the few friends who know the truth about him. From a cultural viewpoint, I also thought that Enma's struggle not to kill Yasha was interesting, and something you would not find in a similar book with a Western background/setting.

I found this book browsing in a local bookshop which carries several books published by Vertical Inc., mentioned above. I think I will go back and get some more.

Next one: The Tattoo Murder Case, as recommended by elkiedee!

Another Japanese crime suggestion that isn't all that literary but is good fun are the two novels released in English by Keigo Higashino. The first should now be out in paperback.

Elkiedee - I've just read The Tattoo Murder Case and really enjoyed it! It's a gothicky mystery, featuring a seductive tattooed beauty, a naive young man who falls for her, a tattoo collector with a "Mephistophelean" profile, a grisly locked-room murder and a Holmesian private detective who helps out the baffled police. It's just as gloriously over-the-top as that makes it sound, but also has some interesting details about the tradition of Japanese tattoos - which led me to google my way to some amazing photos, such as this site (I particularly like the chrysanthemum buttocks) and this site of a traditional-style Japanese tattoo artist working in Tokyo today.

In terms of being different from Western examples of the same genre, the main thing that struck me was I felt this was much more explicit about the eroticism around tattoos than any Western (or at least British) book of the same period would have been - this was originally published in 1948 but as I read it I assumed it was much more recent, and just set in a historical time period.

>Wandering Star: I've read The King's Bastard by Rowena Cory Daniells. It's a fantasy book, set on an invented world, and the author is Australian. Would that qualify? Since we're already in February, I'll add it to the wiki, anyway, but I can move it if you tell me differently.