'A Very Safe Place' by Rachel Heng – Short Story – New Yorker - Review

I read this short story in The New Yorker, titled “A Very Safe Place” by Rachel Heng. The story is about a nine-year-old boy, Shawn, and his father, who finds a man on the beaches of Singapore. Shaun’s father takes the stranger home despite stiff resistance from Shawn’s mother.

 

I followed my usual method of reading and listening to the story, which was read by the author herself. The story deals with migrant issues that plague the small but well-ordered island nation of Singapore, often regarded as a role model for the world in terms of governance and economic growth.

 

The presence of the stranger in his home and bedroom makes Shawn talk about violence with his English teacher. It also makes his mother feel insecure about having a stranger in their home. The sickly, abandoned cat that Shawn’s father takes care of becomes a symbol of how the lives of human beings are sometimes devalued even in comparison with those of animals. It also shows how sympathy and empathy play a part in Shawn’s father’s life—qualities that seem to be largely absent in the others.

 

The story is notable for its deep observations and sharp dialogues. The way even a young boy is bereft of sympathy and empathy is particularly striking when he commands the stranger to leave his parents’ home. Homelessness, along with the desire for a sense of belonging and safety, is one of the main themes of the story.

 

The rotan, or police cane, is another powerful symbol that represents the strict rule of law in the country. In the interview accompanying the story, which is also part of the October 12, 2026, issue of the magazine, Heng talks about her visit to Singapore, where she saw a signboard put up by the police asking the public to be cautious about strangers swimming in the sea. This signboard became the seed for the story.

I was reminded of Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” and the eighth segment of the 2009 Malayalam anthology film Kerala Café, titled “Bridge” which is about abandonment and unwanted existence.

 

If you are interested, listen to the story. 

 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yNFTkRtCrZnyu8Pz5dxc7?si=b7wJj6SQRgy7iGVganzE7A

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Gladys Hynes, Ezra Pound, and a Forgotten Modernist Life by Ed Vulliamy - The Times Literary Supplement - May 15, 2026

The article is a personal and archival exploration of Gladys Hynes (1888–1958), the author’s great-aunt, whose remarkable artistic and political life has largely been overshadowed by her famous correspondent, the poet Ezra Pound.

Gladys was an accomplished painter, illustrator, sculptor and suffragette who moved within the artistic circles of early twentieth-century London. She knew figures such as Wyndham Lewis, Roger Fry, Laura Knight, Nina Hamnett and Arthur Lett-Haines, and worked with Pound on illustrations for his Cantos XVII–XXVII. Her artwork combined modernism, mysticism, Catholicism, pagan imagery and political concerns. One striking painting, Crucifixion (1939), depicts a young pilot crucified on a fighter plane, while another presents war as the product of powerful financial interests.

The article centres on the letters exchanged between Gladys and Ezra Pound from 1927 until her death in 1958. The correspondence, donated to Yale’s Beinecke Library by Gladys’s sister Sheilah in 1967, remained unpublished for decades. The letters reveal a complex friendship that continued despite the enormous ideological gulf created by Pound’s fascism, antisemitism and wartime propaganda.

Gladys herself was an Irish Republican, pacifist and anti-fascist sympathiser. Her family had a strong Irish nationalist tradition, tracing its ancestry to Patrick Hynes, who participated in the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion and later travelled to India. Gladys supported the Spanish Republic and helped anti-fascist refugees, while maintaining friendships with Irish Republicans whose politics sometimes moved in very different directions.

A major theme of the correspondence is the unexpected convergence between political extremes within the modernist avant-garde. Pound admired both Bolshevism and Italian Fascism and was deeply hostile to capitalism and what he called “usury”. The article points out that the shared opposition to finance capitalism sometimes became intertwined with antisemitic ideas, making the correspondence particularly disturbing when read after the Holocaust.

Pound’s letters from his years at St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, where he was confined after being deemed unfit to stand trial for treason, are especially revealing. Gladys continued corresponding with him and even participated in efforts to secure his release. She sought help from figures including Don Luigi Sturzo, Laura Knight and Frank Dobson, while Ernest Hemingway was also campaigning for Pound’s freedom.

Despite Pound’s increasingly offensive political statements, Gladys continued to engage with him primarily as a poet and artist. She admired his work, including the Rock Drill Cantos, telling him that although she found them difficult, reading them made her “more alive”. Their correspondence also discusses vorticism (an early 20th-century British avant-garde art movement, associated particularly with Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound, that emerged around 1914) music, literature, modern art, Nina Hamnett, Wyndham Lewis and Irish politics.

The letters also document the changing world around them: the Second World War, postwar Britain, the coronation of Elizabeth II, Irish Republican activity, immigration from the Caribbean and the beginnings of the Troubles. Gladys supported the IRA’s campaign against British rule and opposed Partition, while also expressing affection for London’s growing multicultural population.

Pound was finally released from St Elizabeths in 1958 and returned to Italy. Gladys died later that year. Her sister Sheilah informed Pound of her death, noting that Gladys had left poems she wanted him to read.

The article ends with a particularly troubling discovery: Gladys’s final document in the archive was a letter to the Observer defending Pound against the accusation of antisemitism. She argued that Pound hated “usury”, rather than Jewish people, despite the deeply antisemitic language present in his correspondence and political writings.

https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/commentary/previously-unseen-letters-between-ezra-pound-and-gladys-hynes-essay-ed-vulliamy

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Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi – Translated by Lin King (Read by Sarah Skaer) - Review

                         

Why should I write a review of a book I have read? Is it for the sake of all those who follow my blog, or is it for my own personal satisfaction? I think the answer is both. Every book creates an emotional bond with the reader because we spend quality time immersed in its pages. Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi was with me for two months. I ‘read’ its 293 pages in multiple formats: as an audiobook, in print, and as an e-book on iBooks. I am writing this blog 20 minutes after finishing the book, for which I gave five stars on Goodreads.

Of course, I particularly enjoyed the last few chapters of the book. The audiobook version was simply marvelous. The narrator, Sarah Skaer, does a great job of transporting me to the world of Hakka cuisine, mochi soup, shrimp tempura, soba noodles and much more. Since the book contains so many references to Taiwanese culinary traditions and food items, it was wonderful to hear their original pronunciations. But the novel is not merely about the food of the island; it is also about the personalities of its two main characters. Sarah Skaer’s voice is still lingering in my mind. The subdued and submissive personality of Chi-chan contrasts sharply with the dominant and inquisitive personality of Aoyama-san, and Skaer brings both characters vividly to life through her narration. Apart from these two female characters, there is also a male character, Mashima-san, whose voice is handled with equal ease by the narrator.

As the two characters eat their way through Taiwan, the reader is presented with a culinary feast. Through Chi-chan and Aoyama-san, the novel brings to the forefront the differences between Mainlanders and Islanders. Aoyama-san’s realization that she had been maintaining a condescending attitude towards Chi-chan throughout the journey elucidates how power dynamics are very much a part of even the most intimate relationships.

The novel is also an ode to the great art of translation. Lin King provides a brief account of how the book was translated, offering insights into the journey of the text across languages and cultures.

I wonder why more Indian writers have not attempted to write novels about the wonderful culinary histories of the different states of India. I am sure there will be someone who will be inspired by this novel and attempt something similar soon. Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, for instance, celebrates the Syrian Christian culinary tradition, and some of the recipes mentioned in the book have even featured in vlogs and newspaper reports.

The ending of the novel, where the two characters sit in an old Taiwanese shop eating dried sunflower seeds, is beautifully written. Aoyama-san’s realization that her love of reading and writing had been with her since her school days—reading what she wanted to read and writing what she wanted to write—is particularly inspiring.

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