AustLit

'Readers of Asian & Pacific Short Stories will have the exciting experience of encountering for the first time the recent work of some of Asia's most talented writers. Collected in this anthology are short stories by authors in nine Asian and Pacific countries: Australia, the Republic of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and the Republic of Vietnam.

'These writers speak in many different languages, and their stories tell of life in places as diverse as the Australian prairie and the Malaysian jungle. The reader will be transported from a ranch in New Zealand to the war-and demonstration-torn streets of Saigon–from a fishing village in Korea to an Australian resort hotel.

'People from many different Asian cultures come to life in these stories: an old woman peddling dumplings in a Thai village; two young New Zealand boys growing up in their own unique ways–one through love, the other through taking responsibility: a Vietnamese mother who thinks she is a failure if she cannot breast feed her children; a Japanese gentlemen whose aristocratic appearance conceals a rather different "real life.' (Publication summary)