book recommendation

Last night and this morning I read a great novel, Lost Names by Richard Kim. I really like his style. It's very spartan. He doesn't offer much in the way of set-up, description, or historical detail. Instead he uses emotions and thoughts to place you in the scene. I've always preferred this approach to story-telling - giving the reader mental state of the characters and then letting them construct their own image of the world in which this state makes sense. As a reader, it's easier to empathize when you don't have to wrestle with the foreign-ness of the novel's setting (in this case Japanese-occupied Korea).