Asian Fiction

China
Inheritance  by Lan Samantha Chang
Making a pact to stay together after their mother's suicide, Junan and her sister, Yinan, find their vow challenged when Junan is separated from her husband by the Japanese invasion of China and sends Yinan after him.

Once on a Moonless Night by Sijie Dai
From the author of the beloved best seller "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" comes a haunting tale of love—and the beguiling power of a lost language—in this story that carries readers across the breadth of China's past.

The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
Li-Xia, the daughter of a young concubine to an old silk farmer in rural China, escapes her destiny of becoming a concubine by outwitting her father's orders to bind her feet and running away with an English sea captain, and takes her first steps toward fulfilling her mother's dream of becoming a scholar.

The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang
A tale set in modern Beijing follows a detective's search for a missing artifact, in a case that illuminates less-favorable aspects of Chinese culture and the detective's own family during the Cultural Revolution.

Soul Mountain by Xingjian Gao
Threatened with time on a prison farm for defying his country's laws of cultural conformity, artist/writer Gao Xingjian embarked on an epic search for his inner self and for his freedom. The author's journey through southern China's ancient mountains and forests inspired this story.

Waiting by Ha Jin
An ambitious and dedicated Chinese doctor, Lin Kong finds himself torn between two very different women—the educated and dynamic nurse with whom he has fallen in love and the traditional, meek and humble woman to whom his family married him when they were both very young.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
In 1979 Muddy River, a provincial Chinese city, the Gu family struggles to deal with the imminent loss of their daughter, Gu Shan, about to be executed as a counterrevolutionary, while their neighbors deal with the realities of life in China.

Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong
In the 1960s on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing intellectual Chen Zhen undertakes a spiritual journey into the world of the nomadic Mongols, a dying culture that honors the endangered Mongolian wolf and follows a philosophy about maintaining a balance with nature.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
A story of friendship set in 19th-century China follows an elderly woman and her companion as they communicate their hopes, dreams, joys and tragedies through a unique secret language.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, two boys are sent to the country for re-education, where their lives take an unexpected turn when they meet the beautiful daughter of a local tailor and stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western literature.

Japan
The China Lover by Ian Buruma
In Buruma's reimagining of the life of Yamaguchi Yoshiko, a Japanese torn among patriotism for her parents, a homeland, worldly ambition, and sympathy for the Chinese, she would reflect almost exactly the twists and turns in the history of modern Japan.

Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
In a novel set in a land much like ancient Japan, a young boy named Takeo becomes a pawn in the ceaseless wars between rival warlord clans in a culture ruled by codes of honor and formal rituals.

Real World by Natsuo Kirino
In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls become suspicious of a neighbor's teenage son when his father is found brutally murdered and the young man disappears, unaware that all four of them will become caught up in the crime.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
An unlikely alliance forms between Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old runaway, and the aging Nakata, a man who has never recovered from a wartime affliction, as they embark on a surreal odyssey through a strange, fantastical world.

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
When tour guide Kenji is hired by Frank, an American with bizarre habits, to show him the seamier side of Tokyo's nightlife, the man's strange behavior leads Kenji to suspect that he is the serial killer who has been terrorizing the area.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
A lyrical tale about loss and grief and familial love. When college student Mikage Sakurai is orphaned by the death of her grandmother, she is rescued from loneliness and grief by Yuichi, a young flower shop delivery man and discovers that families come in many shapes...and can be found in many places.

The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe
Two brothers, Mitsu, a scholar, and Takashi, a political activist, return to their village in the 1960s, and Takashi protests a wealthy Korean's taking over of the town.

Vietnam
The Time in Between by David Bergen
Three decades after serving during the Vietnam War, Charles Boatman disappears during a return to the country, followed by his daughter, Ada, for whom the trip brings increasingly complex revelations and awareness about her life.

No Man's Land by Duong Thu Huong
A young peasant woman, happily married to a successful farmer, returns to her house in the countryside to find a throng of villagers assembled around her gate. She learns that her first husband—who reportedly died as a martyr and war hero many years earlier—is, in fact, alive and has returned to claim her. Faced with immense pressure from the community and the Party authorities, she agrees to leave her second husband and their son to live in a squalid shack with the veteran.

Le Colonial by Kien Nguyen
Voyaging to 1774 Annam, the exotic South China region that came to be known as Vietnam, three missionaries find their dreams of colonial glory dissolving in their discoveries of the area's sophisticated culture, violent instability and predisposition to natural disaster.

Dragon House by John Shors
To deal with their painful pasts, two Americans open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children, and amidst all the suffering and poverty, learn the true meaning of sacrifice, friendship and love.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
Helen Adams, an American combat photographer during the Vietnam War, captures the wrenching chaos of battle on film and finds herself torn between the love of two men, one an American war correspondent and the other his Vietnamese underling.

Thailand
Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
Bangkok policeman Sonchai Jitplecheep investigates the murder of an African-American Marine sergeant and the subsequent death of his partner, making his way through a world of illicit drugs and corruption to find a vicious killer.

Hong Kong – Hollywood Style
Fan Tan by Marlon Brando
While serving time in a Hong King prison in 1927, Anatole Doultry saves the life of a Chinese prisoner whose employer is Madame Lai Choi San, a beautiful and powerful Asian gangster who will make him wealthy if he will join her in an act of piracy.

Malaysia
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
Phillip Hutton lives on a Malaysian island and befriends Endo-san, a Japanese Zen master, who teaches him akido, but when World War II breaks out and the Japanese invade the island, he is torn between saving the lives of his countrymen and his loyalty to his master.

Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
Unable to forget the girl he befriended during the British invasion of 1885 when soldiers forced the royal family of Burma into exile, Rajkumar is lifted on the tides of political and social chaos to create an empire in the Burmese teak forests.

The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka
Her idyllic early childhood in Ceylon lost forever when she is traded in marriage to a stranger in Malaysia, Lakshmi struggles to raise a family and survive the Second World War despite her husband's immaturity.

Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan
The lives of six-year-old Aasha Rajasekharan and her prosperous family are turned upside down by the death of her grandmother and the departure of her older sister, Uma, for Columbia University, in a saga of one immigrant family's secrets and lies.