Popular Asian Historical Books
Find historical books written by authors from Asia for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (105)
81.
The Mountains Sing by Que Mai Phan Nguyen EN
VietnamDescription:
The International Bestseller New York Times Editors’ Choice SelectionWinner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship "[An] absorbing, stirring novel . . . that, in more than one sense, remedies history." —The New York Times Book Review “A triumph, a novelistic rendition of one of the most difficult times in Vietnamese history . . . Vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.” —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In... continue
82.
The Orphan Sky by Ella Leya EN
Country: Asia / 
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Description:
Leila, a young classical pianist, dreams of winning international competitions and bringing awards to her beloved country Azerbaijan. When she receives an assignment from her communist mentor to spy on a music shop suspected of traitorous Western influences, she is determined to prove her worth to the Party. When Leila meets Tahir, the painter who owns the music shop, his jazz recordings, abstract art, and subversive political opinions crack open the veneer of the world she's been living in. Now her comrades force her to make an impossible choice.
83.
The Pearl that Broke Its Shell : A Novel by Nadia Hashimi EN
Country: Asia / 
Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Description:
Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See. In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to ... continue
84.
The Punkhawala and the Prostitute by Wesley Leon Aroozoo EN
SingaporeDescription:
Behind the golden façade of a land filled with opportunities dwell two destitute souls, shipped to Singapore in the late 1800s. Oseki, an ingenue forced into prostitution as a karayuki, grapples with being betrayed by her own father and transforms into a monster she can’t recognise. Gobind, a deaf convict from India, serves his sentence as a punkhawala to a British hunter obsessed with killing Rimau Satan, a man-eating tiger of mythic proportions. Whenever Gobind hunts with his master, his butchered memories lurk in the darkness, aching to pounce. When Oseki’s and Gobind’s paths intertwine, th... continue
85.
The Railway by Hamid Ismailov, Robert Chandler EN
Country: Asia / 
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Description:
Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, this compelling novel introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colorful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars, and Gypsies. At the heart o... continue
86.
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh EN
Description:
Kien’s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows the area well – this was where, in the dry season of 1969, his battalion was obliterated by American napalm and helicopter gunfire. Kien was one of only ten survivors. This book is his attempt to understand the eleven years of his life he gave to a senseless war. Based on true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, this novel is revered as the ‘All Quiet on the Western Front for our era’.
87.
The Storyteller's Secret by Sejal Badani EN
IndiaDescription:
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family's past.
88.
The Sympathizer : Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by Viet Thanh Nguyen EN
Description:
*** WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016*** WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL 2016 WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION 2016 'A fierce novel written in a refreshingly high style and charged with intelligent rage' Financial Times It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware tha... continue
89.
The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies EN
MalaysiaDescription:
Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper is newly married to a rich and charming widower, eager to join him on his tea plantation, determined to be the perfect wife and mother. But life in Ceylon is not what Gwen expected. The plantation workers are resentful, the neighbours treacherous. And there are clues to the past - a dusty trunk of dresses, an overgrown gravestone in the grounds - that her husband refuses to discuss. Just as Gwen finds her feet, disaster strikes. She faces a terrible choice, hiding the truth from almost everyone, but a secret this big can't stay buried forever . . .
90.
The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar EN
TurkeyDescription:
This is the story of the misadventures of Hayri Irdals, an unforgettable antihero who, along with an eccentric cast of characters (a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman empire, the 'life-artist' Halit), founds The Time Regulation Institute. The institute's quixotic quest: to make sure all the clocks in Turkey are set to Western time. Thus begins a brilliant satire about the calamitous arrival of Western and corporate values in tradition-bound Turkey.