Full disclosure: this is one of the most heartbreaking books you’ll probably ever read. But read it you should. A young woman – a political victim of post-Mao China – is about to die. While her voice remains missing throughout the novel, the many residents of...
At 12, Love Liu lives with his architect parents in the village of Ürümchi in the Xinjiang region of northeast China. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution means he is surrounded by discontent and fear – his parents, his friends, their parents must always be diligently...
Since the 2002 best-seller The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, Beijing-born London journalist Xinran has emerged as an international dynamo reclaiming the voices of neglected citizens throughout her homeland. Her subsequent titles – Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet, What the Chinese Don't Eat, Miss Chopsticks, and even her...
Best known for her highly entertaining picture books (The Runaway Rice Cake, The Real Story of Stone Soup), Compestine enters the young adult market with a story that draws on her own childhood during the crushing...
The Cultural Revolution was a harrowing decade of Chinese history. Moying Li recalls her life from ages 12 to 22, when she bore witness to brutal atrocities against her family, friends, and entire community – and...
Through loosely connected short stories, Wang's second collection straddles both worlds of her native China with her adopted America – and the undefinable spaces in between. From the young Chinese girl who sees too much in...
Author of bestselling memoirs Colors of the Mountain and Sounds of the River, Da Chen debuts his first novel for adults. The sprawling saga, set in late-20th-century China, follows the inevitably intertwined lives of two brothers...
Imagine a childhood marked by separation, isolation, abuse, sexual assault, disease and starvation. And imagine feeling lucky – because you survived such atrocities.
The most tragic irony of all is that Emily Wu is indeed lucky, even...
For the average American, Tibet is not so much a troubled faraway land, but an ethereal concept marked by the kind face of the Dalai Lama, often in the company of devotee Richard Gere.
“In the West,...
The long-awaited follow-up to the provocative Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress introduces readers to the hapless Muo, a newbie Freud devotee, who returns to his native China...
A beautifully rendered, haunting autobiographical story about a young boy coming of age during China’s Cultural Revolution, a time marked with incomprehensible, dangerous, chaotic change. Absolutely breathtaking.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/asianweek-2005-02-25-new-and-notable.pdf"...
From the author of Red Sorghum comes a monumental novel that follows 20th-century China through the lives of the eponymous woman and her nine children, none of them...
Chang’s debut novel, following her memorable short story collection Hunger, is filled with complex characters and intricate details about their troubled lives. At its center is the narrator, Hong, a woman caught in multi-layered, multi-generational betrayals...
Don’t be put off by the tacky cover with the bare chest of a necklaced young man. The story within, with all its rawness and shock, is hard to put down. Five Dragons, an...
In spite of the comical nature of many scenes, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant is ultimately a heartbreaking story of a Chinese man and his family caught in...
Originally banned in China, To Live was the basis for the 1994 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize winner of the same name, directed by grandmaster Zhang Yimou. A surprisingly slim volume, To Live tells...
The re-release of the 10-million copy-strong bestselling epic memoir about three generations of Chinese women, opens with a brand-new introduction by the author. First published in 1991, Chang chronicles the lives of her concubine...
Xinran: The Voice of the Good Women of China
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices is one of those books you just can’t put down. Part memoir, part history, part tragedy, part social documentary, Good Women...
From the author of the National Book Award-winner, Waiting, another spare, disarming, amazing novel about trying to survive life in post-Mao China. Jian Wan, a graduate student in literature, cares for his hospitalized mentor, a professor,...
Family Devotions
Da Chen’s late father was supportive of every endeavor his son attempted. Except for becoming a writer. “Writers were always the first to be blamed and punished for any...
