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 (1246)
241.

Q and A by Vikas Swarup EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
Arrested for unbelievably answering all twelve questions on the Indian game show "Who Will Win a Billion?" semi-literate waiter Ram Mohammad Thomas explains to his lawyer how he knew the answer to each question due to events in his personal life, from a past meeting with a zealous Australian army colonel to his tour guide job at the Taj Mahal. A first novel. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
Genre

242.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry EN

Rating: 5 (7 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
"A novel set in India during the Emergency, by the author of Such a Long Journey."

243.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy EN

Rating: 4 (22 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
Still, to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem is only one way of looking at it . . . It could be argued that it actually began thousands of years ago. Long before the Marxists came. Before the British took Malabar, before the Dutch Ascendancy, before Vasco da Gama arrived, before the Zamorin’s conquest of Calicut. Before Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into Kerala like tea from a teabag. That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.

244.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga EN

Rating: 4 (7 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The stunning Booker Prize–winning novel from the author of Amnesty and Selection Day that critics have likened to Richard Wright’s Native Son, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8). The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On ... continue

245.

When I Hit You by Meena Kandasami EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
Coming with giant grass-roots support and extraordinary critical acclaim, When I Hit You has moved readers to laughter, to anger, to tears ... and to action.

246.

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth EN

Rating: 5 (3 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of l... continue

247.

A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
"When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines. Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite being happy in his new family, Saroo always wondered about his origins. He spent hours staring at the map of India on his bedroom wall. When he was a young man the advent of Google Earth led him to pour over satellite images of the c... continue

248.

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi EN

Rating: 3 (5 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK "Eloquent and moving...Joshi masterfully balances a yearning for self-discovery with the need for familial love."--Publishers Weekly Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman's struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist opens a door into a world that is at once lush and fascinating, stark and cruel. Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna arti... continue
Genre

249.

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
A novel about two characters seeking to free themselves - one from the expectations placed on women in early twentieth-century Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora
Genre

250.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that hav... continue