Books from China
94 popular chinese books
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Asia Challenge" were written by authors from China.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
41.
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang EN
Description:
Masterful short works about passion, family, and human relationships by one of the greatest writers of 20th century China. A New York Review Books Original “[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” –The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers c... continue
42.
Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang EN
Description:
In 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime. Jiazhi’s life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin’s bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him? A passionate ta... continue
43.
Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin EN
Description:
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The extraordinary memoir of a peasant boy raised in rural Maoist China who was plucked from his village to study ballet and went on to become one of the greatest dancers of his generation. From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of ... continue
44.
Description:
From the author of 'The Good Women of China' comes the uplifting story of three sisters who, like so many migrant workers in today's China, leave their peasant community to seek their fortune in the big city.
45.
Monkey King : Journey to the West (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Wu Cheng EN
Description:
Before there was The Lord of the Rings, there was China's Monkey King, one of the all-time great fantasy novels--which Neil Gaiman has said "is in the DNA of 1.5 billion people"--now published in a thrilling new one-volume translation with an illustrated foreword by Gene Luen Yang A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, Sun Wukong, or Monkey King, is one of the most memorable superheroes in world literature, known to legions of fans of the most popular anime of all time, Dragon Ball, and the world's la... continue
46.
Monkey: The Journey To The West by Wu Cheng-en EN
Description:
Immensely popular in the Far East, combines elements of the of picaresque novel with folk epic in a mix of satire, allegory, and history in which Monkey encounters major and minor spirits, gods, demigods, demons, ogres, monsters, and fairies.
47.
My Beijing : Four Stories of Everyday Wonder by Nie Jun EN
Description:
"Four short stories set in a hutong, or residential alleyway, of Beijing, China. Yu'er, her grandfather, and their eccentric neighbors experience the magic of everyday life."--
48.
My Mother’s Secret by J.L. Witterick EN
Description:
Inspired by a true story, My Mother’s Secret is a captivating and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the mother and daughter who save them all. Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are simple, ordinary people...until 1939, when the Nazis invade their homeland. Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and Helena do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a make... continue
49.
Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi EN
Description:
Ninth Building is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from Zou Jingzhi's experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside. Zou poetically captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is less talked about--the sheer tedium and waste of young life, as well as the gallows humor that accompanies such desperate situations. Jeremy Tiang's enthralling translation of this important work of fiction was awarded a PEN/Heim Grant.
50.
Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin EN
Description:
WINNER OF THE 2018 LUCIEN STRYK ASIAN TRANSLATION PRIZE The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award. An NYRB Classics Original Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern past... continue