Contemporary Chinese Fiction

Beijin Coma  by Ma Jian
Comatose since being shot at Tiananmen Square in 1989, medical student and protestor Dai Wei begins to regain consciousness as the millennium draws near, a reawakening during which he senses the massive changes that have taken place in his country.

Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Hua Yu
Struggling to support his family on his meager salary amid the cruelty and hardships of Mao's China, Xu Sanguan is haunted by his love for Yile, his wife's son from a previous relationship, over his own children.

The Crazed by Ha Jin
Assigned to care for his fiancee's father, Professor Yang, after he suffers a stroke, Jian Wan is disturbed when the professor begins to rave against his family and colleagues, and takes great risks to uncover the truth.

Death of a Red Heroine by Xialong Qiu
In this Anthony Award-winning debut, Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police must find the murderer of a National Model worker, and then risk his own life and career to see that justice is done. "A Loyal Character Dancer "is the latest in Qiu's Shanghai series featuring Inspector Chen.

Dictionary of Maqiao by Shagong Hong
Organized in the form of a dictionary, it lists more than 100 entries, each printed in English then followed by its Chinese equivalent. Following each entry is a fictionalized vignette, which either documents the language or the people of Maqiao, a village located in a remote area of southern China.

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski
Following his girlfriend to her new teaching position in Thailand, a young reporter researches the story of American anthropologist Martiya van der Leun, following her suicide in the Thai prison where she was serving a lengthy sentence for murder.

The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa
In a remote Manchurian town in the 1930s, a sixteen-year-old girl is more concerned with intimations of her own womanhood than the escalating hostilities between her countrymen and their Japanese occupiers. While still a schoolgirl in braids, she takes her first lover, a dissident student. The more she understands of adult life, however, the more disdainful she is of its deceptions, and the more she loses herself in her one true passion: the ancient game of go.

The Noodle Maker by Ma Jian
A satirical novel exploring the absurdities and cruelties of society in post-Tiananmen China journeys into the world of individuals whose lives are controlled, shaped, and beaten by politics and fate.

Once on a Moonless Night by Dai Sijie
Narrated by an unnamed Western student in China in the 1970s, the story begins centuries before, with the Emperor Huizong, a calligrapher and great art collector, who acquired a silk scroll with a Buddhist sutra written upon it in an ancient lost language. The last emperor of Japan inherits the scroll and then in 1952, Paul d'Ampère, a French linguist, becomes obsessed with translating the scroll and goes to prison for 25 years for illegally acquiring it.

One Man's Bible By Gao Xingjian
One Man's Bible is the second novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Gao Xingjian to appear in English. Following on the heels of his highly praised Soul Mountain, this later work is as candid as the first, and written with the same grace and beauty. In a Hong Kong hotel room in 1996, Gao Xingjian's lover, Marguerite, stirs up his memories of childhood and early adult life under the shadow of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.

Sky Burial by Xinran
In 1958, notified that her husband, a doctor in the Chinese army has been killed in action in Tibet, Shu Wen joins the army, determined to go to Tibet to uncover the truth, only to find herself alone in Tibet, embarking on a 30-year nomadic odyssey in a novel based on a true story.

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.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Li Yiyun
A debut collection of short fiction by a Chinese-American author focuses on the role of fate in the lives of characters living both in China and in the United States, in such works as "Immortality," about a young man who finds a calling because of his resemblance to the dictator, and "Extra" in which a middle-aged woman befriends a young boy who has become an outcast in his rural school.

To Live by Yu Hua
Set around the time of the Cultural Revolution, the novel opens with narrator Fugui describing his carefree life as a young married man, father, and womanizer. His luck quickly changes after he is left penniless by gambling. What follows is tragedy of epic proportions as Fugui endures the successive deaths of his father, mother, 13-year-old son, deaf-mute daughter, wife, son-in-law, and seven-year-old grandson.