“This book tells a story that we don’t often hear, which is about the opium trade and what it did to India, notably to the part of India I come from, Bihar. Why was India even important to the British or the East India Company? It was because of the opium more than anything else. It profoundly changed India, reaching deep into the economy of rural India. Till opium became their biggest trading item, the British didn’t really touch rural India. I learnt this thanks to Amitav Ghosh. The trilogy is about a group of people who have become indentured laborers on an opium ship. The three books follow loosely the lives of about five or six of the characters on that ship…It’s difficult to say what is the best thing about these three books. First, it’s the attention to historic detail. Second, the characters, and third, the attention to language and how it has morphed and died through time – Chinese-English, Laskari, colonial English. There are times in the book when your blood boils at the horrors of colonialism. And there are other times when you just think, ‘The human spirit is unbelievable, that people could survive such cruelty and exploitation and still come out on top with their humanity intact.'” Read more...
The Best Indian Novels
Radhika Jha ,
Novelist
“I love the way that Lee weaves the story, so you are taken from this incredibly poor area of Korea to Japan, who was the colonizing power. The Koreans were regarded as dirt in Japan. They were nothing. They occupied these incredibly poor ghetto areas of Osaka. There was no work for them, and they had to endure horrific bureaucracy and being carded everywhere. They couldn’t do anything, and they couldn’t be anything without the backing of rich Japanese people. The only jobs that any of them could get were in the pachinko parlors. Pachinko is this gambling pinball machine which, apparently, is a big part of the culture in Korea. There were parlors everywhere, and the Koreans worked in them, and all the poor Koreans would go and lose their money in them. It’s what kept the entire Korean economy going in Japan. It’s quite extraordinary. It was fascinating because it was a window onto a world that I knew absolutely nothing about. She made me care. I wanted to know what happens to the characters. When someone dies, it’s so heartrending. You think, ‘That’s not right. You can’t do that!’ But it’s life, and it’s what happens.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set Around the World
Jane Johnson ,
Historical Novelist
“Viet Thanh Nguyen is a powerful new voice for the Vietnamese who left the country after the end of the war in 1975, mainly South Vietnamese who fled after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and settled in the US. The protagonist is half French, half Vietnamese. He’s a spy working undercover for the communists in Saigon and then in the US. When he returns to post-war communist Vietnam, he is imprisoned by his own side. The novel ends at sea with the narrator leaving Vietnam among a crowd of boat people. Viet Thanh Nguyen illustrates the complexity of divided loyalties that come from Vietnam’s history—from being a colony for 100 years, then at war for over 30 years, with families split between supporters of the North and supporters of the South.” Read more...
The Best Vietnamese Novels
Sherry Buchanan ,
Journalist
“Ha Jin’s novel is obviously based on either his experience or his father’s experience of the Korean War. There are some very stark and striking descriptions. He didn’t have access to South Korea, but he has this wonderful ability to treat everybody fairly and to listen to the songs of women guerrillas that were captured by South Korean prison camps and enjoy listening to them. He does the same thing with North Korean and Chinese soldiers and the civilians who were caught up in the battle” Read more...
The best books on The Korean War
Bruce Cumings ,
Historian
“There are a lot of different strands to this novel, one of which is secrets. But it’s also about memory and loss, and the stories we tell to ourselves and to others. Set in 1921 in the Straits Settlements of Penang, we have Somerset Maugham and his lover coming to stay with the Hamlyns: Robert Hamlyn, a lawyer, and his wife Lesley a society hostess. The visit is uneasy. Everybody has secrets, and Somerset Maugham was notoriously good at persuading people to share them, and then, barely disguising the characters, using the stories to his own authorial advantage. With great artistry, Tan Twan Eng shows us how the unravelling of secrets leads to other stories.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction of 2024
Katharine Grant ,
Historical Novelist
“What I really liked about this novel is the way it describes an individual’s place in history. It’s not so much that Ghosh makes a judgement on whether we are agents or victims of history, but he explores the different ways in which individuals react to particular incidents, and how some manage to overcome adversity. The Glass Palace follows the life of the last Burmese king and his family. It begins shortly before the king was deposed and sent into exile by the British army.” Read more...
South Asian Literature
Ahmede Hussain ,
Journalist
“It’s a historical novel that reads like a gripping political thriller. She takes on a controversial subject: the inner circle of Ho Chi Minh, president of North Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969, and hero of Vietnamese independence. He was beloved by millions in communist North Vietnam but vilified by the South. “ Read more...
The Best Vietnamese Novels
Sherry Buchanan ,
Journalist
🏆 Shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature
Peach Blossom by Chinese novelist Ge Fei (real name: Liu Yong) is set at the time of China's Hundred Days' Reform in 1898 when it looked, briefly, as if China's Qing dynasty would embrace reform. The main protagonist is Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official.
Read expert recommendations
“How We Disappeared is a historical novel about the Japanese occupation of Singapore. It’s a sweeping epic and tells the tragic story of a young girl who gets taken as a comfort woman. This is an essential read. It’s a wonderful introduction to Singaporean literature and where Singaporean literature is headed. It’s incredibly beautifully written and very understated.” Read more...
The best books on Singapore
Sharlene Teo ,
Novelist
🏆 Winner 2014 Shincho Prize for New Writers
Finger Bone was the debut novel of award-winning Japanese writer Hiroki Takahashi, first published in English in 2023. The title alone conveys a lot of its horror: rather than gravestones, when Japanese soldiers died in World War II, one finger would be chopped off, stripped of its flesh and sent home to the family. The novel is set in Papua Guinea in 1942, and details the experience of a young, wounded soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army. It's a short, very sad book.
Read expert recommendations
“Wolf Totem contains certain things that have universal romantic appeal: wolves, tribesmen, and so on. But the message that central Chinese policies have been catastrophic for the people who were China’s neighbours – and who are now incorporated into China – very much needed to be said. And it was a way of criticising the party without it being about Han China. But it spoke for a lot of what had happened in Han China too.” Read more...
The best books on China’s Environmental Crisis
Isabel Hilton ,
Journalist
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