China flag Historical fiction books from China

Recommended historical fiction books (10)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. If you are into historical fiction here are some historical fiction books from China for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.

1.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers : Stories by Yiyun Li EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose. “Immortality,” winner of ... continue

2.

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang EN

Rating: 5 (9 votes)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford Univer... continue

3.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
New York Times Bestseller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surrou... continue


5.

Balzac y la joven costurera china by Sijie Dai ES

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
Dos adolescentes chinos son enviados a una aldea perdida en las montanas del Fenix del Cielo, cerca de la frontera con el Tibet, para cumplir con el proceso de "reeducacion" implantado por Mao Zedong a finales de los anos sesenta. Soportando unas condiciones de vida infrahumanas, con unas perspectivas casi nulas de regresar algun dia a su ciudad natal, todo cambia con la aparicion de una maleta clandestina llena de obras emblematicas de la literatura occidental. Asi pues, gracias a la lectura de Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal o Romain Roland, los dos jovenes descubriran un mundo repleto de poesia, se... continue

6.

Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
From the author of the international bestseller Empress Orchid comes the stirring, erotically charged story of the woman known as 'the white-boned demon' - the ambitious wife of Chairman Mao whose actions led to the death of millions in the Cultural Revolution. From the young, unwanted daughter of a concubine, defiant in her refusal to have her feet bound, to the wayward, beautiful actress on the stages of Shanghai, to the ruthless, charismatic partner of the great revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong, Anchee Min moves seamlessly from the intimately personal to the broad sweep of world history in ... continue

7.

Brothers by Yu Hua FR

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
A bestseller in China, Brothers is an epic and wildly unhinged black comedy of modern Chinese society running amok. Here is China as we've never seen it before, in a sweeping, Rabelaisian panorama of forty years of rough-and-rumble Chinese history, from the madness of the Cultural Revolution to the equally rabid madness of extreme materialism. Yu Hua, award-winning author of To Live, gives us a surreal tale of two comically mismatched stepbrothers, Baldy Li, a sex-obsessed ne'er-do-well, and the bookish, sensitive Song Gang, who vow that they will always be brothers—a bond they will struggle t... continue

8.

Dragon Springs Road : A Novel by Janie Chang EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
From the author of Three Souls comes a vividly imagined and haunting new novel set in early 20th century Shanghai—a story of friendship, heartbreak, and history that follows a young Eurasian orphan’s search for her long-lost mother. That night I dreamed that I had wandered out to Dragon Springs Road all on my own, when a dreadful knowledge seized me that my mother had gone away never to return . . . In 1908, Jialing is only seven years old when she is abandoned in the courtyard of a once-lavish estate near Shanghai. Jialing is zazhong—Eurasian—and faces a lifetime of contempt from both Chinese... continue

9.

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
A previously banned work based on a true scandal finds an impoverished village targeted by a blood-selling operation that leads to a catastrophic outbreak of AIDS and decimates an entire community.

10.

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
The Chia family experiences a decline in fortune during the Ch'ing dynasty.