Best Books from China
Chinese literature stretches back three millennia, from the Confucian classics and the Tang poets through the great vernacular novels of the Ming dynasty — Dream of the Red Chamber, Journey to the West, Water Margin — to the 20th century's convulsions of modernisation, revolution, and repression. Mo Yan's Nobel Prize in 2012 brought international attention to a tradition that had been reshaping itself through censorship and exile since 1949. Contemporary Chinese-language fiction — by writers from the mainland, Taiwan, and the diaspora — is among the most formally various and politically charged in the world.
Top 10 from China
Waiting
A Chinese army doctor waits eighteen years to divorce his peasant wife and marry the nurse he loves, entangled by custom, law, and his own indecision. Ha Jin's National Book Award winner is a spare, quietly devastating portrait of life under Communist bureaucracy and the cost of waiting.
The Three-Body Problem
During China's Cultural Revolution, a scientist sends a signal into space that will invite an alien civilisation to invade Earth. Liu's Hugo Award-winning novel, translated from Mandarin by Ken Liu, is a landmark of Chinese science fiction and a thrilling meditation on physics, history, and the fate of civilisation.
A Q zheng zhuan
Published in 1926, A Q zheng zhuan by Lu Xun is a penetrating analysis of politics and society that remains essential reading.
Shifu, you'll do anything for a laugh
A landmark work of short fiction, Shifu, you'll do anything for a laugh by Mo Yan (2001) demonstrates the power of the short story to capture life's essential moments.
