Rounding up the last few months of 2021 with a story “Office of the Mind” at @ElectricLit Recommended Reading, and reviews at @GeorgiaReview, @NPR, and @sfchronicle

Leland Cheuk

If you’re not done with pandemic stories, I’ve got one up at Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading set in a near-future of multiple pandemics! Check out “Office of the Mind” here.

I reviewed Hard Like Water, Yan Lianke’s latest novel to be translated in English, over at Georgia Review.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, I reviewed two books about the Asian American immigrant experience and picked my favorite book of 2021.

At NPR, I contributed two selections to Books We Love 2021, including The Woman in the Purple Skirt, by Natsuko Imamura, translated by Lucy North.

Happy reading and onward to 2022!

At @lareviewofbooks, I interviewed @chaneykwak about his new book THE PASSENGER

Leland Cheuk

“On Thursday, March 14, 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship embarked from Bergen, Norway with the intention of stopping by several Norwegian towns over the next 12 days on the way to London. By late Friday, however, the ship had sailed into a massive bomb cyclone that flooded parts of the ship with 60-foot waves and knocked out the ship’s engines, sending it adrift toward the rocky Norwegian coast.

Travel writer Chaney Kwak was on this cruise on assignment. As the ship’s 1,400 passengers awaited rescue by helicopter, Kwak took notes on this disaster in the making, while contemplating the meaning of other storms in his personal life, which included a mother battling cancer and a two-decades-long romantic relationship also heading for the rocks.“

Read the rest at Los Angeles Review of Books.

My #bookreview of Katie Kitamura’s new novel INTIMACIES up at @npr

Leland Cheuk

“The unnamed heroine of Intimacies, Katie Kitamura’s fascinating and mysterious new novel, observes that “none of us are able to see the world we are living in — the world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality … and its extremity.” She’s a new interpreter at The Hague, responsible for the banal function of translating legal proceedings for extremely evil defendants: genocidal former heads of state.”

Read the rest at NPR.