Read Around Asia Challenge

Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.

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Best books from Asia (1403)
131.

Miss Chopsticks by Xinran EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
From the author of 'The Good Women of China' comes the uplifting story of three sisters who, like so many migrant workers in today's China, leave their peasant community to seek their fortune in the big city.

132.

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
The worldwide bestselling novel by the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. Soul Mountain is a picaresque novel of immense wisdom and sparse beauty, bursting with knowledge and experience and portraying a culture as vast and fascinating as the history of humankind itself. In China in the early eighties, the book's central character embarks on a cross-country journey in search of the mysterious 'Mountain'. Along the way he collects stories, lovers, spiritual wisdom and undergoes myriad experiences that are sometimes violent, sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, but always enriching... continue

133.

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

134.

Family by Jin Ba EN

Rating: 2 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
Four generations of the Kao family struggle to live on the family compound as intergenerational conflicts arise.

135.

Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption and Vengeance in Today's China by Shum, Desmond EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
"THE BOOK CHINA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ."--CNN​ A riveting insider's story of how the Party and big money work in China today, by a man who, with his wife, Whitney Duan, rose to the zenith of power and wealth--and then fell out of favor. She was disappeared four years ago. News of this book led to a phone call from Whitney, proof that she's alive. As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met ... continue

136.

Happy Dreams by Jia Pingwa EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
"First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017."

137.

To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
From New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu comes a short story collection of captivating visions of the future and incredible re-imaginings of the past. In To Hold Up the Sky, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space, from a rural mountain community where elementary students must use physicas to prevent an alien invasion; to coal mines in northern China where new technology will either save lives of unleash a fire that will burn for centuries; to a time very much like our own, when superstring computers predict our every move; to 10,000 years in the future, when humanity is finally able ... continue

138.

China Witness : Voices from a Silent Generation by Xinran EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / China flag China
Description:
In 1912, 5000 years of feudal rule ended in China. In 1949, Mao Zedong came to power. This book is a personal testimony from a normally silent generation, a huge major work of oral history which sums up, in their own words, the vast changes which have overtaken China and its people over a century.

139.

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

140.

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