Read Around Asia Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.
Best books from Asia (1516)
1511.
Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin EN
TaiwanDescription:
An NYRB Classics Original When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre... continue
1512.
The Membranes - a Novel by Chi Ta-wei EN
Description:
First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes--heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies--into a sensitive portrait of one young woman's quest for self-understanding.
1513.
Taiwan Travelogue : A Novel by Shuang-zi Yang EN
Description:
FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese... continue
1514.
The Bear Whispers to Me by Chang Ying-Tai EN
Description:
A reclusive young boy stumbles upon his father's diary. Filled with drawings, photos and anecdotes, the diary reveals an alpine world that his father once inhabited as a child: where tribes were fashioned by tree spirits; animals could be spoken to; fleas danced; and the moon and stars were guiding lights in darkling forests. His father's world was alive with birdsong and hidden spirits, serene yet fleeting-but it all changed when he befriended two bears. Bewitching and timeless, award-winning Taiwanese author Chang Ying-Tai's The Bear Whispers to Me is a poignant forest fable about the vivid ... continue
1515.
The Translator's Daughter : A Memoir by Grace Loh Prasad EN
Description:
A Taiwanese American writer unfurls themes of memory, dislocation, language, and loss to tell a unique story about reclaiming one's heritage while living in a diaspora. Born in Taiwan, Grace Loh Prasad was two years old when the threat of political persecution under Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship drove her family to the United States, setting her up to become an "accidental immigrant." The family did not know when they would be able to go home again; this exile lasted long enough for Prasad to forget her native Taiwanese language and grow up American. Having multilingual parents--including a f... continue
1516.
The Library of Legends by Janie Chang EN
Description:
“A gorgeous, poetic journey threaded with . . . magic about a group from a Chinese university who take to the road to escape the Japanese invasion of 1937” —Kate Quinn, New York Times–bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress China, 1937: When Japanese fall on the city of Nanking, Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff must walk a thousand miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the st... continue