Popular Asian Satire Books
Find satire books written by authors from Asia for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (11)
1.
ChinaDescription:
From "China's foremost literary satirist" (Financial Times) comes a captivating new novel set at a religious training center in Beijing, focusing on the unlikely love story of a Buddhist nun and a Daoist priest At the Religious Training Center on the campus of Beijing's National Politics University, disciples of China's five main religions--Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam--gather for a year of intensive study and training. They live in dormitories, eat at shared tables in the cafeteria, and attend lectures to learn about their own religion while also sharing in the less... continue
2.
Kvachi by Mixeil Javaxišvili EN
GeorgiaDescription:
This is, in brief, the story of a swindler, a Georgian Felix Krull, or perhaps a cynical Don Quixote, named Kvachi Kvachantiradze: womanizer, cheat, perpetrator of insurance fraud, bank-robber, associate of Rasputin, filmmaker, revolutionary, and pimp. Though originally denounced as pornographic, Kvachi's tale is one of the great classics of twentieth-century Georgian literature--and a hilarious romp to boot.
3.
Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal EN
SingaporeDescription:
We are invisible: we clean your houses, we look after your children, we know your secrets. But now you know one of ours...
4.
Quichotte : A Novel by Salman Rushdie EN
IndiaDescription:
***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** In a tour-de-force that is both an homage to an immortal work of literature and a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixotefor the modern age. Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest... continue
5.
Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla EN
Description:
"MA pass Rangnath arrives at Shivpalganj to spend some time with his uncle Valdyaji, the most important person in the village and the man who controls the grain cooperative and the intermediate college. There is a rebellion brewing among the college teachers; and Ramadhin, Vaidyaji's archi-rival, won't give up the village council without a fight. Factionalism, wheeling and dealing, and corruption take centre stage. Confronted with such chaos, Rangnath finds his textbook learning irrelevant"--Back cover.
6.
The book censor’s library by Bothayna Al-Essa EN
KuwaitDescription:
"The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish--allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and c... continue
7.
The Disconnected by Oguz Atay EN
TurkeyDescription:
“My life was a game, but I wanted it to be taken seriously,” says Selim, the anti-hero of the novel. But the game has a terrible end with his suicide, and his friend Turgut’s quest to understand this is the story of the book. He meets friends whom Selim had kept separate from each other, he finds documents in a kaleidoscopic variety of styles, sometimes hugely funny, sometimes very moving, as Selim rails against the ugliness of his world whether in satire or in a howl of anguish, taking refuge in words and loneliness.
Under layers of fantasy is the central concept of the D... continue
8.
The Four Books by Yan Lianke EN
Description:
In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling reeducation compound, freethinking artists and academics are detained to strengthen their loyalty to Communist ideologies. They are forced to carry out grueling physical work and are encouraged to inform on each other for dissident behavior. The prize: winning the chance at freedom. They're overseen by preadolescent supervisor, the Child, who delights in reward systems and excessive punishments. When agricultural and industrial production quotas are raised to an unattainable level, the ninety-ninth district dissolves into lawlessness. And then, as in... continue
9.
The Garlic Ballads : A Novel by Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt EN
Description:
The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life unchanged for generations. The Communist government has encouraged them to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed. Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. A surplus on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers must watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields. Families are destroyed by the random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the state. The prisoners languish in h... continue
10.
The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor EN
Description:
In this award-winning novel, Tharoor has masterfully recast the two-thousand-year-old epic, The Mahabharata, with fictional but highly recognizable events and characters from twentieth-century Indian politics. Nothing is sacred in this deliciously irreverent, witty, and deeply intelligent retelling of modern Indian history and the ancient Indian epic The Mahabharata. Alternately outrageous and instructive, hilarious and moving, it is a dazzling tapestry of prose and verse that satirically, but also poignantly, chronicles the struggle for Indian freedom and independence.