Book Review: The Curse of Kim's Daughters by Pak Kyongni

There are people, even entire families, who get more than the usual share of misfortune in life. While some may simply call it bad luck, others will be convinced that in the world nothing ever happens without a reason because everything is interconnected. In fact, it can be very comforting to believe that God, the Universe, whatever is just and that sooner or later we all get what we deserve. First published in 1962, the historical novel The Curse of Kim's Daughters by Pak Kyongni (or Park Kyong-ni for the English edition that appeared in 2004) follows the karmic decline of a well-to-do family in a small Korean sea port during the first decades of the twentieth century. Their misfortune starts with a hot-tempered husband who drives his terrified wife into suicide, kills an innocent man and disappears, but it’s his son and his grand-daughters who eventually pay the price.

Book Review: The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

For most people starting a family is the natural thing to do once we are grown up. It’s also natural to have romantic ideas about it because we all crave for happiness. Romance novels and family sagas aren’t so popular without reason! The much cherished ideal today is to enter a love marriage “until death may part you”, but only few of us are aware that the concept is a somewhat recent invention of western society. Until not so long ago arranged marriages were rather the rule than the exception here like in other cultures. The story of The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka begins in 1930 with a Ceylonese teenager being married off to a much older, but supposedly wealthy Tamil man living in Malaya. She finds her husband horrible, and yet makes the best of the situation and becomes the strong matriarch of a big family often shaken by fate.