Eight titles about the impact of Japanese imperialism during WWII

Cindy Fazzi is a Filipino American writer and former Associated Press reporter. Her debut thriller, Multo, will be published in June 2023.

She’s the author of a historical novel, My MacArthur (2018). The book was chosen as a quarterfinalist in the 2018 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition.

Fazzi was born and raised in the Philippines and educated in the Philippines (Ateneo de Manila University) and the United States (Ohio State University). She has worked as a journalist in the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books about the "the depth and breadth of the horrors of Japanese imperialism," including:

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

A family saga reminiscent of Pachinko, this story of four generations of the Tran family is told from the points of view of Huong and her grandmother, Dieu Lan. The family survives famine and the horrors of the Japanese occupation during World War II and later on, the Vietnam War. It’s both refreshing and illuminating to read a Vietnamese story from the perspective of Vietnamese women.

Huong escapes the bombing of Hanoi with her grandmother during Vietnam War. As bad as Huong’s experience is, her grandmother has experienced worse. Dieu Lan’s father was killed by the Japanese during World War II and her family’s land was taken by Ho Chi Minh’s communist regime during Vietnam’s land reform in the 1950s. In real life, the land reform occasioned mass executions, imprisonment, and torture of landowners in Vietnam.

The book’s title comes from a wooden carving of a bird—son ca, meaning “mountains sing”—that Huong’s father had given her. The Mountains Sing is the author’s first novel in English.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue