Read Around Asia Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.
Best books from Asia (1975)
1691.
Blue-Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu EN
Sri LankaDescription:
From the award-winning author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies comes a brilliantly written, globe-spanning novel about identity, faith, family, and sexuality. In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child’s blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Kalki’s tenth year, he is confronted with three trials that will test his power and prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. While he seems to pa... continue
1692.
Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai EN
Description:
Although life for Amrith in 1980 Sri Lanka seems rather uneventful and orderly, things change in a hurry when his male cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith finds himself completely enamored with his new visitor. The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it isthe season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life before, when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his scho... continue
1693.
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje EN
Description:
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly 'Cat's Table' with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, 'bursting all over the place like freed mercury'. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner - his... continue
1694.
Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje EN
Description:
With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropolog... continue
1695.
Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera EN
Description:
Traces the experiences of two women on opposing sides of the Sri Lankan civil war who connect in unexpected ways when a Tamil aspiring teacher is arrested by soldiers and placed in the path of a young woman from a loving Sinhala family.
1696.
Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell EN
Description:
The first volume in Alexander Cordell's classic trilogy of mid-nineteenth century Wales. Set in the grim valleys of the Welsh iron country during the turbulent times of the Industrial Revolution, this unforgettable novel begins the saga of the Mortymer family - a family of hard men and beautiful women, all forced into a bitter struggle with their harsh environment, as they slave and starve for the cruel English ironmasters. But adversity could never still the free spirit of Wales, or quiet its soaring voice, and the Mortymers struggle on even as the iron foundries ravish their homeland and cri... continue
1697.
What Lies Between Us : A Novel by Nayomi Munaweera EN
Description:
Ganga, a young girl, grows up carefree in the midst of her loving family in an old and beautiful house nestled in the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka. Her childhood is like any other—until it isn’t. A cherished friendship is revealed to have monstrous undertones and the consequences of trauma spell both the end of her childhood and that of her stable home. Ostracized by their community in the wake of one terrible night, Ganga and her mother seek safety by immigrating to America. In America Ganga must negotiate the challenges and thrills of an American teenage girlhood. She navigates immigran... continue
1698.
The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne EN
Description:
They thought this was just another salvage job. They thought wrong. An AI overseer and a human crew arrive on a distant planet to salvage an ancient UN starship. The overseer is unhappy. The crew, well, they're certainly no A-team. Not even a C-team on the best of days. And worse? Urmahon Beta, the planet, is at the ass-end of nowhere. Everybody expects this to be a long, ugly, and thankless job. Then it all goes disastrously wrong. What they thought was an uninhabited backwater turns out to be anything but empty. Megafauna roam the land, a rival crew with some terrifyingly high-powered gear h... continue
1699.
Description:
A haunting and elegiac love story set in a spoiled paradise, as vital and as relevant today as when it was first published
1700.
Description:
Wir sind mitten im Krieg in Sri Lanka. Dieser Krieg ist doch schon lange zu Ende?
Gewiss, aber es gibt andere Kriege, und die hier geschilderten Probleme der Menschen, die in Kriegsgebieten leben, bleiben gleich.
Im Roman begegnen wir der ganzen Palette von Gefühlen, die ein Krieg allgemein mit sich bringt: Leid, Wut, Unsicherheit, Verstörung, Hoffnungslosigkeit, Verzweiflung, aber auch Zuversicht und gar Humor.
Der Autor zeigt uns zudem, wie absurd und sinnlos Kriege sind.
In der Hoffnung auf ein besseres Leben begibt sich der Protagonist dieses Buches auf eine gefährli... continue