Popular Asian Historical Books
Find historical books written by authors from Asia for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (138)
11.
Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Balakian EN
ArmeniaDescription:
On April 24, 1915, Grigoris Balakian was arrested along with some 250 other leaders of Constantinople’s Armenian community. It was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire’s systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey—a campaign that continued through World War I and the fall of the empire. Over the next four years, Balakian would bear witness to a seemingly endless caravan of blood, surviving to recount his miraculous escape and expose the atrocities that led to over a million deaths. Armenian Golgotha is Balakian’s devastating eyewitness account—a haunting reminder of the firs... continue
12.
Bangkok Wakes to Rain : A Novel by Pitchaya Sudbanthad EN
ThailandDescription:
"A house in the center of Bangkok becomes the point of confluence where lives are shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. Witness to two centuries' flux in one of the world's most restless cities, a house plays host to longings and losses past, present, and future. A nineteenth-century missionary doctor pines for the comforts of New England even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam increasingly difficult to resist. A post-war society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting the course of her future. A jazz pianist is summoned in the 1970s to conjure music t... continue
13.
Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook EN
Country: Asia / 
South Korea
South Korea
Description:
The gripping true story of a South Korean woman's student days under an authoritarian regime in the early 1980s, and how she defied state censorship through the rebellion of reading.
14.
Barefoot Gen : A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima by Keiji Nakazawa EN
JapanDescription:
GRAPHIC NOVELS: MANGA. Beautiful new hardcover edition of Barefoot Gen Volume One! Striking new design with special sturdy binding for institutional use. August 6, 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Today, the danger posed by nuclear weapons is as great as ever, yet few people survive who witnessed their horror. To mark the event, and honor Keiji Nakazawa's incredible work, Last Gasp created a special set of Barefoot Gen, volumes 1-4 for institutional use. Nakazawa's manga illustrates the true impact of nuclear weapons when used against a civilian... continue
15.
Beirut by Samir Kassir EN
LebanonDescription:
Beirut is a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. --from publisher description.
16.
Between Two Rivers : Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid EN
Country: Asia / 
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
Description:
Humanity's earliest efforts at recording and drawing meaning from history reveal how lives millennia ago were not so different from our own.
17.
Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, David Hazard EN
PalestineDescription:
The unforgettable story of Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Christian with deep love for both Jews and Arabs. The birth of the modern Jewish nation is set against ancient and modern history.
18.
Catfish and Mandala : A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew X. Pham EN
VietnamDescription:
A collection of memoirs recounting the journey of a Vietnamese-American touring Vietnam and the Pacific rim in search of cultural identity.
19.
Description:
An abandoned package is discovered in the Paris Metro: the subway workers suspect it's a terrorist bomb. A Vietnamese woman sitting nearby, her son asleep on her shoulder, waits and begins to reflect on her life, from her constrained childhood in communist Hanoi, to a long period of study in Lenin-grad during the Gorbachev period, and finally to the Parisian suburbs where she now teaches English. Through everything runs her passion for Thuy, the father of her son, a writer who lives in Saigon's Chinatown, and who, with the shadow of the China-Vietnam border war falling darkly between them, she... continue
20.
Churchill's Secret War : The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee EN
IndiaDescription:
A dogged enemy of Hitler, resolute ally of the Americans, and inspiring leader through World War II, Winston Churchill is venerated as one of the truly great statesmen of the last century. But while he has been widely extolled for his achievements, parts of Churchill's record have gone woefully unexamined.As journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. A series of Churchill's decisions between 1940 and 1944 dir... continue