Popular Asian Political Books
Find political books written by authors from Asia for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (58)
1.
A Burning by Megha Majumdar EN
IndiaDescription:
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies-and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India. This is an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe. They seek to rise-to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies. One is Jivan, a Muslim girl from the slums accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train bec... continue
2.
A Fort of Nine Towers : An Afghan Family Story by Qais Akbar Omar EN
Country: Asia / 
Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Description:
A carpet designer in Kabul describes his childhood before the Mujahedin took over, his family's struggle for survival after fleeing their home and how his secret carpet factory provided both employment and education for neighborhood girls.
3.
A Season for Martyrs by Bina Shah EN
PakistanDescription:
The U.S. literary debut of an up-and-coming Pakistani novelist and journalist. Ali Sikandar is assigned to cover the arrival of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader who has returned home to Karachi after eight years of exile to take part in the presidential race. Already eager to leave for college in the U.S. and marry his forbidden Hindu girlfriend, Ali loses a friend in a horrific explosion and finds himself swept up in events larger than his individual struggle for identity and love when he joins the People’s Resistance Movement, a group that opposes President Musharraf. Amidst deadly terr... continue
5.
Georgia6.
Banker To The Poor : Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus EN
Country: Asia / 
Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Description:
The inspirational story of how Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus invented microcredit, founded the Grameen Bank, and transformed the fortunes of millions of poor people around the world. Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics in Bangladesh, who realized that the most impoverished members of his community were systematically neglected by the banking system -- no one would loan them any money. Yunus conceived of a new form of banking -- microcredit -- that would offer very small loans to the poorest people without collateral, and teach them how to manage and use their loans to create succes... continue
7.
Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy EN
Description:
The “courageous and clarion” Booker Prize–winner “continues her analysis and documentation of the disastrous consequences of unchecked global capitalism” (Booklist). From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s one hundred richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic prod... continue
8.
Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said EN
PalestineDescription:
A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. "Grandly conceived . . . urgently written and urgently needed. . . . No one studying the relations between the metropolitan West and the decolonizing world can ignore Mr. Said's work.' --The New York Times Book Review In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield P... continue
9.
Dawn : Stories by Selahattin Demirtas EN
TurkeyDescription:
A new book from Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint, SJP for Hogarth: Written from behind bars, the unforgettable collection from one of Turkey’s leading politicians and most powerful storytellers. In this essential collection, Selahattin Demirtaş’s arresting stories capture the voices of ordinary people living through extraordinary times. A cleaning lady is caught up in a violent demonstration on her way to work. A five-year-old girl attempts to escape war-torn Syria with her mother by boat. A suicide bombing shatters a neighborhood in Aleppo. And in the powerful story, 'Seher', a young factory wo... continue
10.
Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa EN
SyriaDescription:
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A dogged, absurd quest through the nightmare of the Syrian civil war Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria’s ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination. Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya... continue