Robert Sheppard Literary Blog & World Literature Forum

For those of you who are searching for new Japanese and Asian Voices World Literature Forum recommends "Digital Geishas and Talking Frogs: The Best 21st Century Stories from Japan" by Helen Mitsios a collection of contemporary Japanese short stories ranging from the hikikomori, or "Withdrawn Youth" literature to the anguish or anonymous sex in such writers as Yoko Tawada or the anomie of Haruki Murakami’s "Super Frog Saves Tokyo.

World Literature Forum brings to your attention Caribbean writer Patrick Chamoiseau’s L’empreinte à Crusoé "Crusoe’s Footprint" a reworking of the theme of Robinson Crusoe into an interiorized existential dimension stretches from Africa to the West Indies, occasioned by the abandonment on a desert island  of African Muslim Dogon from Mali put ashore when he suffers a delusional mental breakdown while working on a slave ship. His solipsistic mental disorder expressed in continuous inner monologue leads to a rediscovery and reconstitution of his self and identity.

World Literature Forum invites you to take a look at La civilización del espectáculo, "The Civilization of Spectacle" by 2010 Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, an exploration of the themes of the banality and failure of modern culture, the disappearance of eroticism, the frivolousness of politics and religious tolerance. He yearns for a return from modern confusions and cultural failure to a re-rooting in traditional cultural values.

World Literature Forum recommends looking into the works of Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa, including his recent Une mélancolie arabe, the story of a vulnerable young man whose sexual life stretching from Morocco to France to the world of Egyptian cinema is tinged with an impulse of self-destruction which nonetheless may open latent possibilities of regeneration and rebirth.  

World Literature Forum recommends you check out the works of Botho Strauss, a leading German writer and keen observer of the dilemmas of alienation and failing communication in modern society. His recent collection of short stories "Sie/Er" or "She/He" demonstrates the power of his observation and feeling.

World Literature Forum invites you to Check Out the works of Rohinton Mistry, Nepalese Laureate winner of the 2012 Neustadt Prize for World Literature. Mistry follows in the tradition of Salman Rushdie, but also of Dickens and Tolstoy in the scope of such works as his "Such a Long Journey," of worldwide appeal and interest.