Read Around Asia Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.
Best books from Asia (1411)
831.
The Latehomecomer : A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang EN
LaosDescription:
One Hmong family's harrowing escape from war in Laos to the uncertainty of a new home as refugees in Minnesota.
832.
The Story of Zahra by Ḥanān Shaykh EN
LebanonDescription:
Zahra, a young Lebanese woman haunted by memories of abuse by her parents, enters into a loveless marriage in West Africa and then returns to war-torn Beirut.
833.
The Locust and the Bird : My Mother's Story by Hanan Al-Shaykh EN
Description:
Kamila is nine years old when she is taken from the poverty of her childhood village in southern Lebanon to Beirut. She has never learned to read or write though she longs to go to school. Stories, poetry and film are her passion - and a beautiful boy called Muhammad. They fall in love before Kamila is forced into an arranged marriage, despite her tears and screams. She is only fourteen years old. On her wedding night her first daughter is conceived; four years later, Hanan is born. Kamila and Muhammad continue to see each other in secret, risking their lives. It is eight years before Kamila c... continue
834.
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran EN
Description:
Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. It has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies. The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran's musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, s... continue
835.
Samarkand : A Novel by Amin Maalouf EN
Description:
The story of Samarkand is woven around the history of the manuscript of the Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayyam, from its creation by the poet and sage in eleventh-century Persia to its loss when the Titanic sank in 1912. Unwittingly involved in a brawl on the streets of Samarkand, Omar Khayyam is brought before a local judge who recognizes his genius as a poet and gives him a blank book in which to inscribe his verses. Thus the head of a great poet is saved and the Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayyam is born. The threads of his life become interwoven with the designs of the vizier, Nizam al Mulk, and of Hassan S... continue
836.
House of Stone : A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid EN
Description:
Culture and institutions.
837.
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine EN
Description:
An obsessive introvert in Beirut, eschewed by her family and neighbors for her divorced status and lack of religious reverence, quietly translates favorite books into Arabic while struggling with her aging body until an unthinkable disaster threatens what little life remains to her. By the best-selling author of The Hakawati. 20,000 first printing.
838.
Beirut by Samir Kassir EN
Description:
Beirut is a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. --from publisher description.
840.
Balthasar's Odyssey by Amin Maalouf EN
Description:
There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, is it possible that there is a secret one-hundredth name? In this tale of magic and mystery, of love and danger, Balthasar's ultimate quest is to find the secret that could save the world. Before the dawn of the apocalyptic 'Year of the Beast' in 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Genoese Levantine merchant, sets out on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of the civilised world, from Constantinople, through the Mediterranean, to London shortly before the Great Fire. Balthasar's urgent quest is to track down a copy of one of the rarest a... continue