Recommended Books for Asia

[cruisesoon]

I will be on the Diamond Princess in March and love reading fictional books of the area I will be visiting. Does anyone have any fictional books to recommend? My husband likes to read non fiction so welcome any recommendations for that too.

[paul929207]

"The Soong Dynasty". I don't know the author. It is non-fiction. It is the story of the Soong family. They include Madame Sun Yat Sen, Madame Chaing Kai Shek, the will of the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister.

[montelco]

I will be on the Diamond Princess in March and love reading fictional books of the area I will be visiting. Does anyone have any fictional books to recommend? My husband likes to read non fiction so welcome any recommendations for that too.

 

You may not be visiting Laos ,but it is near Cambodia and there is a wonderful series by Colin Cotterill with Dr. Siri who is a 72 year old coroner in Laos. Admittedly, an unusual detective story, but the stories are great and friends whom I have recommended them to have read the whole series . The first one is The Corner's Lunch and the second one is Disco for the Departed. Colin Cotterill lives in Thailand now but has worked in Laos. Check out his web page. Fantastic story telling with great descriptions and ironic sense of humour based in reality so your husband might enjoy them as well. Mine did as did an 80 year old friend who has never left Australia.

 

Another series is set in Hong Kong is The Dark Heavens Trilogy by Kylie Chan. The first in the series is White Tiger. Again full of action and adventure with humour. She has a website too. She is Australian but lived in Hong Kong for over a decade so her stories have that real feel of the place. Hope that gets you started. It really depends on what sort of books you like.:)

[Bookish Angel]

Bones that Float: A Story of Adopting Cambodia by Kari Grady-Grossman. I intervewed the author last year and loved the book

 

Love and Death in Shanhai by Nien Cheng. A long, excellenct account of the author's imprisonment during China's cultural revolution.

 

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. Story of a young Hmong girl with epilepsy and the East meets West problems that plague her treatment in the USA.

 

The Aquariums of Pyongyang: 10 Yeras in the North Korean Gulag by Chol-Hwan Kang. Harrowing but good.

 

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah. Sad but good.

 

Son of the Revolution by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro. The son of intellectuals tells of his family's experience in the Cultural Revolution.

 

Fiction:

 

American Fuji by Sara Backer A good mystery set in Japan that has a lot of cultural insight.

 

The Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey. The first in the author's mystery series set in Japan.

 

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. A good, sweet novel about Maoism's attempt to imprison the mind. I loved the protagonist.

 

100 Shades of White by Preethi Nair. Two generations of a family in India and England. A good novel where pickles figure prominently.

 

Maya Running by Anil Banerjee is a pre-teen book about a young Indian girl growing up in Canada and a wild adventure. It is good up until the end but the cultural references are spot-on and often hilarious.

 

For Matrimonial Purposes by Kavita Daswani. A young Indian woman is not yet married and her family is trying to fix her up. Definitely chick lit but not bad if you like that genre with a cultural difference.

 

 

Enjoy!