Manga, Novels, K-Pop, and Films from Asia and Their Popularity in the West

When browsing in German- or French-language bookstores, I increasingly notice how much Asian literature is on offer. This was already evident more than two decades ago with manga from Japan and South Korea. Whether I was in the comic book section in the US, France, or Germany, young people would be sitting in front of the manga, engrossed in reading. Other sections with youth literature, on the other hand, seemed to be less popular.

I myself collect French comics, and I often come across manga published in French. Not only that, but also illustrated books about ghosts and demons.

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Havana Split

Cuba, 1958: El Presidente General Batista rules the Caribbean island south of Florida with the help of the USA and corrupt friends. Lily, who comes to visit her father, has barely landed on the cruise ship when she is immediately drawn into the kidnapping of an actress diva. Her father, who runs a private detective agency, is heavily in debt to Don Alfonso, a gang leader, due to his betting addiction. And he finally wants his 50,000 dollars – or, in lieu of payment, the kidnapping of Concepción Milagros, a beautiful actress of her time and also the lover of his rival.

Together with John, ex-CIA, and José, both employees of her father’s private detective agency, Lily tries to save what can be saved. The situation is complicated by a revolutionary who is about to overthrow the dictator and take control of the island. His name is Fidel Castro. Bombs explode, people are mowed down with machine guns and in the midst of it all, a competition for supremacy takes place in both the political and criminal milieu.

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Kidnappers, Murderers and Healers in Post-Apartheid South Africa

A kidnapped baby, a murder and the torching of white farmers’ farms are more interlinked than police lieutenant Shane Sheppard ever suspected. And the fact that his lover, the daughter of a black politician, is also having an affair with the leading politician of the radical white party complicates matters even further.

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Pillow Man – The Man to Sleep With

Not all superheroes wear a cape. And Jean, a Canadian in Paris, certainly doesn’t. A former truck driver who had to give up his job due to illness, he has been looking for work for three years without success. His girlfriend Marianne stands behind him the whole time and cheers him up.

A job advertisement on the Internet turns out to be a surprisingly different job. And Jean was born for it. He sleeps with clients, but not in a sexual sense. No, this is strictly forbidden in the guidelines of the sleep agency. Millions of French people suffer from a lack of sleep or are simply alone, and some are prepared to pay good money to have someone to keep them company in bed at night and on whose shoulder they can sleep.

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How I Learned To Love Fado

I must have looked quite confused as I stood in front of the shelf with all the fado CDs, because out of nowhere he appeared and with a mysterious expression he pointed to the CD of a singer: Mafalda Arnauth.

It was April 2001, and I was in Lisbon, Portugal, for a conference organized by the company I was working for at the time. On the flight, I was leafing through the Baedeker – which was still available in printed form back then – and stumbled across a musical genre that has fascinated me ever since. It was fado, a musical genre from Lisbon and Porto that seems quite melancholy and indeed is, and not without good reason means “fate”. In any case, I had decided to take a closer look at it.

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Piratess of the Caribbean

The story of Anne Bonny may not be true, but then it is at least beautifully invented. Based on the only source probably by Daniel Defoe from 1724, this album tells the life of this Irish woman who was born out of wedlock to a rich plantation owner and raised as a boy.

Ann – as she is called in the comic album – fell out with her father because of her marriage to the pirate James Bonny, burned down his plantation and fled to Nassau in the Bahamas, where she led a varied and dangerous life as a pirate, in which she also broke the sexual taboos of the time by choosing her partners.

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Laurel and Hardy – The Sad Side of the Comedy Duo

Who didn’t grow up with the short films of probably the most famous comedy duo in the world? We’re talking about Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who made people around the world laugh in the 1920s. Oliver Hardy, always mindful of his dignity, tried to control the chaos caused by Stan Laurel, only to make it even worse.

In my childhood, the black and white films usually presented by the great German comedian Theo Lingen were regularly shown in the early evening program. Unlike Charlie Chaplin, who was a superstar in the 1930s and 1940s, the comedy of Stan and Ollie has survived to this day.

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The Master Chef And His Apprentice

15-year-old Ulysse Ducerf is destined for great things, as he is the future heir to an industrial empire. But then his father’s past, in which he did business with the Germans during the occupation, catches up with him. The scandal leads Ulysse and his mother to a village in the provinces, far away from Paris, to wait out events until the dust has settled.

Ulysse, a sensitive boy who is more interested in art than the administration of an industrial group, has to spend his time tutoring because his performance suffers from his lack of interest.

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A flower as a counterpoint in Mondrian’s studio

Sometimes, therefore, one puts an album aside several times, with the desire to prolong the pleasure and delay the end of the story. With this comic about an episode in the life of the Dutch modernist painter, Piet Mondrian, French scenarist Jean-Philippe Peyraud and Italian illustrator Antonio Lapone let us immerse ourselves in it and sympathize.

Mondrian, portrayed as a loner, spends what little free time he has dancing, but refuses to show any other emotion or even love. He hates the color green and uses women only for dancing and venal sex.

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