Read Around Asia Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.
Best books from Asia (1978)
541.
The Gabriel Club by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya EN
IndiaDescription:
Set in 1970s Budapest, this novel tells the story of a group of artists who form an underground collective dedicated to opposing the repressive Communist regime. The club disbands when the founder mysteriously disappears, but are reunited 17 years later when the police make a discovery.
542.
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry EN
Description:
Rohinton Mistry’s enthralling novel is at once a domestic drama and an intently observed portrait of present-day Bombay in all its vitality and corruption. At the age of seventy-nine, Nariman Vakeel, already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, breaks an ankle and finds himself wholly dependent on his family. His step-children, Coomy and Jal, have a spacious apartment (in the inaptly named Chateau Felicity), but are too squeamish and resentful to tend to his physical needs. Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a small, crowded ... continue
543.
Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh EN
Description:
Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family―the climax of a yearslong project. When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis trilogy ten years ago, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story. Smok... continue
544.
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy EN
Description:
A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer. Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” “H... continue
545.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai EN
Description:
BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST • A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss “A spectacular literary achievement. I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.”—Ann Patchett “A novel so wonderful, when I got to the last page, I turned to the first and began again.”—Sandra Cisneros “Devastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic . . . an unmitigated joy to read.”—Khaled Hosseini “A grand and sti... continue
546.
Coming Up for Air by George Orwell EN
Description:
Middle-aged George Bowling perceives the true condition of the world when he visits his childhood home in the late 1930's
547.
Indonesia548.
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer EN
Description:
Minke is a young Javanese student of great intelligence and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of 19th-century Java, he battles against the confines of colonial strictures. It is his love for Annelies that enables him to find the strength to embrace his world.
549.
Man Tiger : A Novel by Eka Kurniawan EN
Description:
An unforgettable tale of literary magical realism from a critically acclaimed Indonesian writer who has been compared to Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mark Twain Longlisted for the International Man Booker, this “supernatural tale of murder and desire fascinatingly subverts the crime fiction genre” as it tells the story of a half-man, half-magical female white tiger (Huffington Post). A wry, affecting tale set in a small town on the Indonesian coast, Man Tiger tells the story of two interlinked and tormented families and of Margio, a young man ordinary in all particulars except t... continue
550.
Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan EN
Description:
The English-language debut of Indonesia's rising star.