Ernakulam Public Library Search for 'su:" Speculative fiction"'

BEAUTY IS A WOUND

By Kurniawan, Eka . London Pushkin Press 2015 , Compulsively readable, Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humour, and romance in an astonishing epic novel, in which the beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by every monstrosity. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole is a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders, followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule. Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Beauty Is a Wound is passionate and ironic, exuberant and confronting. Hailed as 'the next Pramoedya', Eka Kurniawan is an exciting new voice in contemporary literature. 9781782272434

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BEAUTY IS A WOUND

By Eka Kurniawan. New Delhi Speaking Tiger 2015 , Described as ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude kicked into another gear’, Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humour and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The novel begins with the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, then a Dutch colony, during World War II. Dewi Ayu, a beautiful half-Dutch, half-Indonesian girl, is captured by Japanese soldiers along with twenty others and brutalized. After the US Army frees Indonesia—and Dewi—from the Japanese, Dewi finds her family untraceable and their mansion occupied by American soldiers. Struggling to survive, she turns to prostitution and soon becomes the most sought after prostitute in the land. Dewi Ayu gives birth to three daughters, each as stunning as herself. Over the course of their lives, Dewi and her daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. However it is Dewi’s fourth daughter—named Beauty in a cruelly inverted joke—who draws them all together and brings this epic tale to its final conclusion. Drawing on local sources—folk tales and all-night shadow-puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope—Kurniawan’s gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his nation’s troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; and the mass murders of perhaps a million ‘Communists’ in 1965, followed by three decades of Suharto’s despotic rule. Kurniawan’s distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature. BEAUTY IS A WOUND by Eka Kurniawan "Kurniawan...is in many ways a literary child of Gunter Grass, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie "---The New York Review of Books 9789385755682

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ARE YOU HAPPY NOW

By Hanna Jameson. UK Penguin Random House 2023 , At a New York City wedding, on a sweltering summer night, four people are trying to be happy. Yun has everything he ever wanted, but somehow it's never enough. Emory is finally making her mark, but feels the shame more than the success. Andrew is trying to be honest, but has lied to himself his whole life. Fin can't resist falling in love, but can't help wrecking it all either. And then the world begins to end. The four of them watch as one of the wedding guests sits down and refuses to get back up. Soon it's happening across the world. Is it a choice or an illness? Because how can anyone be happy in a world where the only choice is to feel everything - or nothing at all? 9780241515082

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CHILDREN OF STRIFE

By Tchaikovsky, Adrian. London Pan Macmillan 2026 , Children of Strife is attributed to Adrian Tchaikovsky and is generally treated as a science fiction narrative within his broader body of speculative fiction work. Like much of his writing, it is associated with themes such as survival under extreme conditions, evolutionary or social adaptation, and the consequences of conflict between differing groups or systems of life. Depending on the edition or appearance (standalone or anthology), the specific plot details may differ, but it falls within modern British science fiction exploring complex ecological and social ideas. 9781035057795

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