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 Malaysia.
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.
1.
Rating: 4 6 Votes
Description:
A finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel One of BookPage's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021 One of Tor.com Reviewers' Choice Best Books of 2021 One of Book Riot's Best SFF Standalones of 2021 “Ghosts. Gods. Gangsters. Black Water Sister has it all…a wildly entertaining coming-of-age story for the twentysomething set, with a protagonist who is almost painfully relatable at times.”—Vulture "A twisty, feminist, and enthralling page-turner."—BuzzFeed "A sharp and bittersweet story of past and future, ghosts and gods and family."—Naomi Novik, New York Times bestselli... continue
2.
Rating: 3 23 Votes
Description:
A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! A Bram Stoker Award Nominee and World Fantasy Award Finalist! An August Derleth Award Nominee! An Indie Next and October LibraryReads Pick! 2022 RUSA Reading List: Horror Winner! A Most Anticipated Read on Goodreads, Tor.com, Crime Reads, BookRiot, The Nerd Daily, and more. Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists. A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to k... continue
3.
Description:
From the the award-winning author of Five Star Billionaire and The Harmony Silk Factory comes a whirlwind personal history of modern Asia, as told through his Malaysian and Chinese heritage. In The Face: Strangers on a Pier, acclaimed author Tash Aw explores the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia through his own complicated family story of migration and adaptation, which is reflected in his own face. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers’ treacherous boat journeys to Malaysia from mainland China in the 1920s... continue
4.
Rating: 3.5 62 Votes
Description:
Yangsze Choo s stunning debut, The Ghost Bride, is a startlingly original novel infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, and unexpected supernatural twists. Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia, hopes for a favorable marriage, but her father has lost his fortune, and she has few suitors. Instead, the wealthy Lim family urges her to become a ghost bride for their son, who has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home fo... continue
5.
Rating: 3.5 5 Votes
Description:
Retells a Malaysian folk tale in which a lonely girl, Suraya, inherits from her grandmother a pelesit, a ghostly demon, who proves to be a good companion, bringing both danger and hope.
6.
Rating: 3 3 Votes
Description:
Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess have shaped our perceptions of Malaysia. In Tash Aw, we now have an authentic Malaysian voice that remaps this literary landscape. The Harmony Silk Factory traces the story of textile merchant Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in British Malaya in the first half of the twentieth century. Johnny's factory is the most impressive structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny is a hero—a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his so... continue
8.
Rating: 4 2 Votes
Description:
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A sumptuous garden maze of a novel that immerses readers in a complex, vanished world.” —Kirkus (starred review) An utterly transporting novel set in 1930s colonial Malaysia, perfect for fans of Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longin... continue
9.
Rating: 4 9 Votes
Description:
“Fantastic, defiant, utterly brilliant.” —Ken Liu Zen Cho returns with a found family wuxia fantasy that combines the vibrancy of old school martial arts movies with characters drawn from the margins of history. A bandit walks into a coffeehouse, and it all goes downhill from there. Guet Imm, a young votary of the Order of the Pure Moon, joins up with an eclectic group of thieves (whether they like it or not) in order to protect a sacred object, and finds herself in a far more complicated situation than she could have ever imagined.
10.
Rating: 4 10 Votes
Description:
At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi leaves behind her childhood among the mango trees of Ceylon for married life across the ocean in Malaysia, and soon finds herself struggling to raise a family in a country that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful. Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to secure a better life for her daughters and sons. From the Japanese occupation during World War II to the torture of watching some of her children succumb to life’s most terrible temptations, she rises to face every new ... continue