It’s Opera—Everybody Dies from Erica Miner

As we head into a rather big news week, do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

Jim: I take full responsibility for the premature appearance of week’s question, which was supposed to be next week’s question. I miscalculated the date. So, apologies to all. But I feel this topic fits our guest poster’s book better anyway. 

Erica Miner writes a thrilling series of mysteries set in the world of opera. I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of reading all her books (as advance reader copies), including her latest, OVERTURE TO MURDER, which released just last week. I’m a BIG FAN of Erica’s and love her engaging amateur violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan. Though serious in tone, these books are so much fun. And you’ll learn a lot about opera reading them. As you’ll see below, Erica is a violinist who played for many, many years with the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, THAT Metropolitan Opera. A marvelous writer of juicy murder mysteries, Erica is a brilliant lecturer and screen writer as well.

Please welcome Erica Miner to 7 Criminal Minds and don’t miss OVERTURE TO MURDER!

“It’s Opera—Everybody Dies”

 

CSI: OPERA?

 

Asked if any of my Opera Mystery novels have been “ripped from the headlines,” my response was, “It’s opera. It makes its own headlines.”

 

Headline-worthy events are not a nightly occurrence at the opera. But they have happened. 

 

As I think back to my 21 years as a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera, there were two discoveries that stood out as the most significant: 1) an opera house is the perfect environment for mischief and mayhem; and 2) what goes on offstage can be more dramatic than what happens onstage. Two of the most significant examples of these occurred while I was there.

 

Image 1

Once during a live performance being broadcast to thousands, if not millions, of people across the US (Verdi’s Macbeth—I know, the dreaded word; and believe me, it was one of the most disastrous productions of the 20th century), a guy in the audience decided to commit suicide by taking a flying leap off the balcony (see picture 1). I’m not making this up! Fortunately for everyone else, he waited until the intermission to do the deed. It had to have been the longest in Met history, since—ugh—there was all that cleanup to do. 

 

The above is an example of something dramatic happening away from the stage. But on a different occasion, the catastrophe occurred onstage during a performance that was not supposed to be part of the performance.

 

The opera was new to the Met: The Makropoulos Case by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. It was written in Czech, but we were doing it in English (a salient detail in this story). The stage director, in his infinite lack of wisdom, had the poor comprimario tenor (comprimario singers are solo singers who do minor roles, the equivalent of supporting actors in film) singing from the top of a twenty-foot ladder. Seriously? Picture this: the Met stage is itself eight or ten feet high, then add twenty feet to that, with a singer who had a fear of heights. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Sure enough, at the first performance of The Makropoulos Case, the poor tenor was singing from the top of a twenty-foot ladder in front of four thousand people. He sang a couple of lines, and then collapsed and plunged to his death right there on the stage (see image 2). Turns out he had had a heart attack—no surprise. But here’s the kicker: the last words he sang before the fall were, “You can only live so long.”

Image 2

 

You can’t make this stuff up. Writing about such incredible events is hard to resist. But would I rip the above stories from the headlines to use in my novels? Highly unlikely. It would be recognized by too many people as real life, coming from such a high profile institution as the Met. There’s a fine line between actual occurrences and fiction. I think many well-informed people would have issues with my reproducing some of the Met’s least savory moments in my novels.

That said, I have taken inspiration from these happenings to develop and deepen my characterizations. The vast majority of my characters represent an amalgamation of the traits and experiences of the people I worked with. I remember one particularly vivid headline-generating incident that involved one of my closest colleagues. I based one of my main characters on this person, couched the event in fictional prose to make it less recognizable, and wove it into the plot of the first book in my series, Aria for Murder. Those in the know understood the connection. Some were critical, others kinder in their assessments. In subsequent novels, however, I’ve steered away from being too close to real life.

Nonetheless, when it came to my protagonist I did not hesitate to base her on the person I know best: myself. At the beginning of Aria for Murder my protagonist, Julia, is a young violinist much like me when I first started out at the Met: a naïve, inexperienced, starstruck neophyte who knows nothing about the political machinations and infighting that go on backstage. She’s just excited to be making her debut in the orchestra of the world’s most prestigious opera company. Little does she know something terrible is about to happen. It's not long before Julia finds herself entangled in a murder investigation and becomes cognizant of the dark side of the theatre, with its shadowy hallways and hidden stairways. 

 

The dreadful occurrence that sets the story in motion is based on a real situation that to my knowledge was not covered in the media, involving a company member: a case of what happens at the Met stays at the Met. Only insiders are familiar with the true circumstances. But I chose to fabricate a fictional happening from a newsworthy one. In that sense, I fueled the story with a recent though not current event.  

Other plot points in Aria for Murder and the sequels Prelude to Murder and Overture to Murder are based on headlines and stories that have been reported in the media. Opera companies are rife with volatile people and potential danger. This goes back to my theory that opera houses provide the perfect setting for calamity and catastrophe: sometimes tragic, sometimes unbelievable, but always headline worthy.

 

A friend of mine was at a rehearsal where the soprano was singing her death scene, while her twelve-year-old son was waiting patiently at the back. The friend asked the boy what he thought about his mother’s death scene. The kid replied, “It’s opera. Everybody dies.”

 

Wise words from the mouth of babes. What happens onstage can be reflected in true occurrences and vice versa: the kind of sensationalism that media like to proclaim in their headlines. That’s one of the aspects of opera that results in its wide appeal: a unique art form that chronicles true occurrences, both contemporary and timeworn. 

 

Verdi, one of the greatest opera composers, based works like Don Carlo on true events, heightening Spanish history with exalted music. Anthony Davis’s The Life and Times of Malcolm X musicallyrecounts the infamous assassination of a controversial public figure. The tradition continues, ripped from headlines both recent and historical, with true life situations that often end in tragedy, where someone, if not everyone, dies.

 

It’s opera. 

 

 

Bio:

 

Erica Miner

Award-winning Seattle-based author, lecturer, screenwriter and arts journalist Erica Miner believes opera theatres are perfect places for creating fictional mischief! Drawing on her 21 years as a violinist at the famed Metropolitan Opera, Erica balances her reviews and interviews of real-world musical artists with fanciful plot fabrications that reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera, guiding readers through a dramatized version of the opera world in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series.

Erica’s young violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan, investigates high-profile murder and mayhem behind the Met’s “Golden Curtain” in Book 1, Aria for Murder (2022), finalist in the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Chanticleer Independent Book Awards. 

In Book 2, Prelude to Murder (2023) (‘A skillfully written whodunit of operatic proportions’—Kirkus Reviews https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/erica-miner/prelude-to-murder/, 

Distinguished Favorite, 2024 NYC Big Book Awards, further operatic chaos and ghostly apparitions plague Julia at the Santa Fe Opera. In Overture to Murder, releasing in Oct. 2024, Julia finds herself in jeopardy once again at the San Francisco Opera. 

 

Erica’s debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. Her screenplays have won awards in the Writer’s Digest, Santa Fe, and WinFemmecompetitions. When she isn't plumbing the depths of opera houses for murderous mayhem, Erica frequently contributes reviews and interviews for the well-known arts websites www.BroadwayWorld.com, www.bachtrack.com, and www.LAOpus.com.

 

AUTHOR WEBSITE:

https://www.ericaminer.com

 

SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES:

https://www.facebook.com/erica.miner1              

https://twitter.com/EmwrtrErica          

https://www.instagram.com/emwriter3/

 

ISBNs: 978-1-68512-781-7 (pb)        978-1-68512-782-4 (eb)

 

The Goosebump Genre

It's Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

by Dietrich

While I’ve written some dark stuff, I haven’t attempted to write a horror novel. I don’t possess the macabre fascination that would be needed, and there’s no draw to explore that line between what’s real and what’s hiding under the stairs. 

"The tale of monstrosity and terror is a basket loosely packed with phobias; when the writer passes you by, you take one of his imaginary horrors out of the basket and put one of your real ones in – at least for a time.” — Stephen King, from the preface of Night Shift.

I grew up reading horror classics like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson’s Hell House, Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, and Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories. And while I did enjoy them, I came to realize I didn’t much care to have the bejesus scared out of myself. These days, I still feel that way, so I can’t say I’m a big fan of the genre, with one exception — Stephen King. He’s certainly got a talent for creating relatable characters facing the worst kind of hell and horror. I don’t think anyone could even think of the genre without putting him at the top. Just consider his classics like The Shining, Misery, The Dead Zone, Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Firestarter, and It.

And there are those images from his film adaptations that are hard to get out of my head too, scenes like: “Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!” And how about those twins?

While I can appreciate his horror novels, I’m a bigger fan of his not-so-scary books, the ones that cross into other genres, something he does exceptionally well. There are the psychological thrillers Misery and Dolores Claiborne, the crime novels Billy Summers and The Colorado Kid, the hardboiled detective stories of the Bill Hodges trilogy, the dystopian novels Running Man and The Long Walk, the alternate history 11/22/63, the literary fiction Hearts in Atlantis, the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. And there’s the Depression-era prison novel, The Green Mile, an equal mix of fantasy, thriller and crime. And there’s Joyland which combines mystery, horror and coming-of-age genres. And the Dark Tower series that combines fantasy, horror and western.

Another genre hop for King and a recent favorite of mine was Fairy Tale. He wrote it during the pandemic lockdown. It’s a dark fantasy about an ordinary young guy forced into a hero’s role in an otherworldy realm, fighting the forces of evil.

Another book I enjoyed was Road Rage, a thriller tribute to Richard Matheson and a collaboration between Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. There’s the classic tale, Duel, about a salesman driving cross-country on an empty two-lane highway and being menaced by an unseen driver in an old oil tanker. It’s full throttle terror riding on 18 wheels. Then there’s the short story Throttle by King and Hill, which is a different kind of duel in the Nevada desert, pitting a faceless trucker against an outlaw motorcycle gang.

And since we’re talking about the horror genre this week, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Dean Koontz and his novel Watchers; Anne Rice and Interview with the Vampire; Clive Barker and Weaveworld; and Peter Straub and Ghost Story — all of whom may have you sleeping with the light on, but all worth checking out as well.

Over the Top

 

Terry here: It’s Halloween week. The question: Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan? Here’s a Halloween scene.

Bet you can’t guess where it is. It’s Athens! We were there for three weeks, and the last day, October 11, we went to a lively part of Athens where there were a lot of outdoor cafes and a general air of merriment. Here, we ran into a street decorated for Halloween that surpassed anything I’ve seen in other cities. 

 When we were in Florence, years ago, around Halloween, we saw the same thing—a plethora of Halloween decorations—ghosts, cats, bats, spooky faces, cobwebs, witches, etc. 

Until then I had thought Halloween was strictly an American event (I can’t call it a holiday because holiday is a shortening of the words “holy day,” and unless you’re a Satan worshiper, it’s isn’t really holy. (Not that many of our holidays are religious, but they are holy in the sense that they convey a sense of importance. “President’s Day” for example is a way to honor the memory of men--of course it’s always been men--who led the U.S., and whose memory we hold dear.) 

 But I digress. When my son was small, I loved Halloween, and thought it was a great event for little kids. But gradually over the years I’ve seen it morph into a chance for adults to dress up in costume, maybe allowing themselves to try out an alter-ego. But those events don’t have the same sense of surprise and delight that I see in children at Halloween. 

 Sense of surprise? Yep. I remember the first time I finally was able to convince our son that he should go up to our neighbor’s door and yell “trick or treat” and that nothing bad would happen. When they threw candy into his bag, he turned around with utter delight on his face and yelled, “It worked!” 

The funny thing is that he didn’t like going to the street one over from ours, where most every home was decorated to the hilt. It overwhelmed him. It was intense. Children cried and hung back, the sense of fun taken over by overwrought decorations--competition among neighbors to outdo each other. It was an adult event that had lost its sense of cheerful fun. 

As for the element of “horror,” I don’t really enjoy reading horror. If Halloween is about tricksters and alter-egos, the few horror books and stories I’ve read seem to have something else entirely at work—a sense of unseen malevolence that lies just outside our real world. It’s about manifesting the evil that lives in some humans and making it palpable. (Think The House of Leaves--a truly spooky book) 

Horro is about taking the worst of people’s behavior and rendering it larger-than life. It always seems to have a sense of vengeance associated with it. “Treat me badly, and I will lay waste to you and your loved ones. I will terrify you, torment you, tear you limb from limb.” Sometimes the “being” wielding such hatred often looks like an ordinary person until something triggers their fury. (Think Carrie). But there are also “beings” that lie just outside our ability to see them who direct unseen horrors onto unsuspecting people. 

It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is an attempt to explain the unexplainable—to explain misery that is visited on people that they don’t seem to deserve. Or who deserve some kind of retribution, but the retribution is beyond cruel. 

 You could argue that children’s Halloween hints at this with its ghosts and witches and costumes that manifest “other,” but horror lies at the far end of that spectrum. 

 Not only do I not read much horror, but I also don't write it. As a crime writer, I get enough sense of malevolence from acts of real people in everyday life. That said, I’ve recently read a book that turned out to be in the horror category, and it haunts me because of the intense fury manifested in it. It was very well-written, so I had no quarrel with the writing; just the intensity of its villain. There was that sense that something lies just outside our real world, and it’s something that wants revenge, that it takes ordinary anger and twists it into the unrecognizable and makes it into something no human could actually do. As far as I'm concerned, horror has nothing to do with Halloween. 

 So…Happy Halloween everyone!

Things that Scream in the Dark

It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

Spooky Spice ...er... Brenda here.

I have always loved Halloween and all that goes with it. Jack 'o lanterns, trick or treating, ghosts and goblins. But don't ask me to watch a horror movie or read a horror book. These are not some of my favourite things.

I write about murder and yet, I do not read true crime or watch shows like Criminal Minds. It's not the actual murder that interests me, more the puzzle and the people involved in a crisis. The psychology. What drives a person to kill somebody else, and how do they live with what they've done? What is the impact on those left behind? How do the detectives figure out whodunit? 

Amp these plot lines up a few notches to the horror level. Chain saws. Clowns. Screaming. Deranged people. Running and more running. Hiding. Blood. Lots of blood. The times I've sat through a horror movie have led to a sleepless night with bizarre dreams, some might say nightmares. I can picture the scenes in my head long after they've ended. Reading produces the same reaction. There's enough horrible stuff going on in the world that I don't need to let more into my brain.

I've had this kind of imagination since I can remember. When I was seven or so, I used to hide behind the floor-length curtains in the living room if I came home from school and my mother was out and siblings hadn't made it home yet. (Back in the days when helicopter parents weren't a thing.) And don't ask me to go tromping around in the woods after dark -- not going to happen. One of my childhood friends told me that wolves circled our houses at night, howling and trying to get inside, enough to give me a reoccurring nightmare (that I appear to have outgrown). Still, you won't find me hiking through the forest after the sun sets.

Okay, deep breath.

My fellow bloggers will likely recommend books in the horror category, and I tip my hat to them. I won't be since I don't read much if at all in the genre. The Halloween shenanigans give me an annual dose of spooky, and that's more than enough scary for me.

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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Booooo, by Josh Stallings

 

Q: It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

A: Firstly, I have avoided horror since I was ten-years-old and watched Hitchcock’s The Birds. In the last couple of years, I started reading some Horror. 

Coyote Songs, by Gabino Iglesias, was my gateway into horror. It seamlessly blends crime fiction and horror. But when it gets scary, it becomes terrifying.

Next came Cynthia Pelayo’s Children of Chicago. It starts as a police procedural, a Chicago detective is trying to find missing kids. Brown kids, that she knows no one will care about if she doesn’t. It gradually changes into supernatural horror. 

For my current project, I have spent the last few years educating myself on Latin American literature that led me to Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes, another police procedural that becomes a supernatural horror tale. Creepy demon filled scary shit. By the time I was aware it was horror, I was too invested in the characters to look away.

And then there is Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo. A true nightmare novel. A journey to a literal hell that had me hooked from the jump.

Horror and crime have so many overlaps that the lines blur. We have to keep creating sub-genres or kill the idea of genre all together. Not the worst idea I ever had.

Me, I’ll keep reading everything regardless of label. 

Sorry, this week is brutally short. I’m in Costa Rica doing research for my latest WIP. 

The book was thus gaily dressed in English, by Catriona

Do books get lost in translation? What are some non-English novels you love and are there any that didn’t work over the cultural divide?

Includes the line "the knight
was thus gaily dressed in green"

This question turns me back into a linguist again. I'm almost entirely mono-lingual (although you'd be surrised how any people think a linguist speaks a lot of languages) so when I read a book in translation, I never feel confident about where the writer ends and the translator begins, much less who to blame if something's amiss. I suppose I could read multiple translations of the same work to try and make sure but, apart from Beowulf, I don't think I ever have. I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a couple of times, I suppose, but I probably preferred the Simon Armitage version because I really like Simon Armitage. (He's got a podcast called "The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed". How could you not love that? And anyway, the original Middle English is barely another langauge to start with.

So the honest answer to the first bit of the question is I don't know and it would take years of study to find out. 

But to turn to the second bit: I seem to have mostly read Japanese novels in the last couple of years, as far as translated works go. (And I'm not alone - see Eric yesterday.) Japanese novels translated into English are having a moment, I reckon. Why? Well, they're short. (It's not breaking news that I'm a Philistine.) I have no idea if all contemporary Japanese novels are short or if it's the short ones that get translated, but when I've picked one up in a bookshop it's never felt like a massive, off-putting, potential investment, of either time or money.

I would recommend The Bookshop Woman, by Nanako Hanada to anyone who likes biblio-fiction, anyone in the mood for something right between quirky and cozy, anyone who's ever used a dating app (or anyone like me who thanks her stars every day she's never used a dating app). It's about a young, separated but not quite divorced, almost homeless woman who decides to extend her beloved bookselling job into her social life by offering to find the perfect book for her (platonic) dates. 

A bit more cozy although still slightly odd is The Kamogama Food Detectives, by Hisahi Kashimai. In it, a man and his daughter offer to recreate iconic meals from their clients lives, tracking down elusive ingredients and recipes, bringing healing and closure. You've got to not mind a bit of feyness to enjoy this one. In some moods, I might have slapped it shut and gone to read about serial killers instead. But, as winter approaches, and with a fireside and an armchair . . . 

Not being able to pinpoint what was the writing and what was the transaltion was the only irksome thing about The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo. In translation, it's a straight-up Golden-Age detective story in form and in style. Which is to say, clues abound, the detective is a genius and the style is slightly stuffy and a wee tiny bit over-written here and there. But, for anyone who loves the classics in English but can't see reading them again because they're too familiar - more than this one Yokomizo is now available in English.

Fianlly, I think I might have included The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa, in last December's BOTY round-up. Which is to say, I recommend it without any hesitation to anyone at all. It's speculative fiction, I suppose, maybe horror in a quiet way. It concerns a dystopian society in which the memory police are banning things - roses and calendars are just two examples. The objects disappear and people forget that they ever existed. Except for a few (neurodivergent?) individuals whose memories remain. The novel is the story of a writer who is trying to finish her book before she loses all her memories and is hiding her editor, who is one of those who remember. (Maybe only writers would think this is a horror novel!)

The tense dread and mounting despair of The Memory Police remind me of another translated book I read, this time a French novel, that I've forgotten the title and author of (memory police been at me?), but would love to re-find. In this case, it wasn't a successful piece of work, but I've no idea if it was a flawed original or a poor translation. The reason it stuck in my mid was that it struck me as a waste of a premise. The narrator is . . . locked-in? I think he has been poisoned by something that has robbed him of speech and sight - possibly also hearing? - and has a few days to solve his own murder. See what I mean? It should have been incredible. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Cx 

The Universal Language of Books by Eric Beetner

I love reading books from other cultures. Sadly, I’m not fluent in any other languages to read in the original, but I adore the art of translation. I’ve read French novels, Japanese, Icelandic, Italian and Spanish. Here are a few of my favorites:

A Dog In Water and Shield Of Straw by Kazuhiro Kiuchi. From what I can tell these are the only two books of Kiuchi’s translated into English, which is a shame because I love both of them. There have been several Japanese novels to break through to American markets in recent years, like Out by Natsu Kirino and Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. Kiuchi’s work is less well known, but I champion these books whenever I can.

A Dog In Water is really more like there novellas tied together by a common character. Kiuchi’s writing is sparse and straightforward and his action unpredictable. These don’t feel like American crime novels.

Shield Of Straw is high concept in it’s plot of a prisoner being transported across Japan via train to face trial while citizens all along the route are trying to get at him to kill the murderer and claim the multi-million dollar reward offered by the victim’s father. Good hook, right? But it goes much deeper than just a chase story as the officer charged with escorting the criminal is torn between his duty and just letting the mob have him so justice is served. 

Both are excellent novels with a feeling unlike any American or English-language crime novels I’ve read.

The French crime fiction master Jean-Patrick Manchette is no stranger to many English-reading crime fans. Most of his work has been in translation, and works like The Prone Gunman should be essential reading. Manchette’s particular brand of existential crime drama is so very French. The action and violence is all tempered with meditations on life, death and meaning. If George Simenon is the most popular French crime writer, and with his prolific output it’s hard to argue at least on sales figures, Manchette is perhaps the most French, at least from this American’s point of view. Simenon hits many of the traditional beats of an American or UK police procedural in his long-running series and his standalones so they are not unfamiliar to those audiences. Manchette feels like reading something from another culture.

I discovered the short story collection Crime/Guilt by Ferdinand Von Schirach quite by accident and I bought it purely because I hadn’t ever read anything translated from German before. What I discovered was another writer who I enjoyed very much, but whose stories felt very foreign, even in my own language. There is a coldness and matter-of-fact tone to the writing that is at once what we think of as very German in it’s humorless bluntness and that fits the subjects very well. Von Schirach is a defense attorney and these stories are inspired by many real life cases. They read as if written by someone who has seen it all and is maybe a little jaded by it. I kept marveling at the depths of the awful crimes being discussed in such a plainspoken voice. I can’t think of any English-first writers to compare it to.

When thinking of diving into the Vimal series by Indian writer Surender Mohan Pathak, it’s easy to be intimidated. Since the debut of the series in 1971 there have been 46 novels, and those compromise only a fraction of Pathak’s over 300 works. Luckily I got a good tip that The 65 Lakh Heist was the place to start, and it quickly become one of my favorite heist novels ever. 

Reading a book as culturally different as this Hindi novel, yet one that retains so much of what I love about a series like the Parker books by Richard Stark, was thrilling. This was the 4th Vimal novel and this series ranks alongside the Parker books for simple, straightforward criminal-as-protagonist crime novels. The anti-hero in India is fascinating to read about and I still have a whole lot more to go.

The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi came recommended to me by one of my favorite crime writers, Ken Bruen. That’s endorsement enough.  

A fascinating novel, I found it more influenced by Nordic crime writing than by American or UK authors. It was interesting to me to see the hugely popular Nordic crime style being written by an Italian, rather than the usual dominance of English language crime writing. It makes total sense, too. Why not be influenced by authors who are much closer, sell in huge numbers and are popular the world over?

The Whisperer should definitely be on the list of anyone who likes Lars Kepler, Stieg Larsson or Jo Nesbo.

I look forward to finding more hidden gems in translation. It’s a skill not often recognized in the literary world. Making the words comprehendible to an English-reading audience while still maintaining the cultural differences and subtle nuance in voice is a challenge. But when done right, it does what the best fiction does which is to take us to another place and expose us to other worlds.