Books by Anonymous

“The story is about an upwardly mobile and corrupt merchant called Ximen Qing, his household and his various affairs. Everything goes his way for a while. However, his pursuit of sexual, financial and political gratification becomes increasingly depraved, and readers sense that retribution is inevitable as he fails to curb excess or take any moral responsibility.” Read more...

Five East Asian Classic Books Worth Reading

Tuva Kahrs, Five Books Editor

“Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee was written by an anonymous author in the 17th or 18th century… The detective is based on Di Renjie (630-700), who is known to have solved many puzzling cases in real life. In this fictionalised novel, he is magistrate in a district of Shandong province, meaning that he was the detective, prosecutor and judge for the district town and surrounding areas.” Read more...

Historical Mystery Novels

Tuva Kahrs, Five Books Editor

“It’s a story about a very, very long war that’s fought between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, cousins all, over a kingdom that was divided into two equal parts and given to the two groups…it starts off as a war about justice because the Pandavs are trying to get their kingdom, which was wrongfully taken from them in this game of dice, back. Then, as things go on, there is no good side and no bad side, because to win this very long and sad war, everybody compromises their morals, their humanity – everybody cheats. As the number of the dead mount, the pain and the anger, and then the thirst for revenge, grow…In the end, there is just one thing, and that is the need to win — which destroys pretty much everything. I find it eternally relevant, this idea of the fragility of morality.” Read more...

The Best Indian Novels

Radhika Jha, Novelist

“Gilgamesh is a hero in the ancient mould. He’s half-god, enormously strong, a bit randy, a bit dim, and he goes through adventures which embody the human experience writ large. He starts off as the king of a small kingdom, making a nuisance of himself – enforcing droit du seigneur, sleeping with women on their marriage night, pushing other men around, being a bit of an arse. So the gods make a rival to him in strength, a wild man. They fight, realise neither can win, then become best friends and go off on all sorts of adventures. They kill all sorts of ogres and beasts, until the gods think this is getting a bit much and decide Gilgamesh’s friend has to die. It’s then that Gilgamesh realises the truth of mortality. He sees his friend die, and thinks if this heroic human being, the strongest of the strong, can die, that means I’m going to die too. He faces his own mortality, and it’s terrifying. He leaves his kingdom and roams the wilderness, looking desperately for some solution to the problem of mortality.” Read more...

The best books on Immortality

Stephen Cave, Philosopher

“This book, A Woman in Berlin, is one of the great diaries of the whole war. Although it was published anonymously we do know the name of the woman who wrote it now. She was called Marta Hillers and she was an extremely intelligent journalist who had travelled quite a lot before the war and was certainly not a Nazi. She was extremely open-minded and it was her enquiring mind and observation which really showed the reality of the Soviet attack on Berlin in April 1945 through to the beginning of May.” Read more...

The best books on World War II

Antony Beevor, Military Historians & Veteran

“The reason why I think it is so important is because many people think that we speak much too easily and glibly about God and the author of this book says that in order to truly know God we have to go into a cloud of unknowing…This book, for me, is very important because Christianity has this strong mystical tradition, which can often be neglected. And this is one of Christianity’s most important mystical writings.” Read more...

The best books on Christianity

Richard Harries, Theologians & Historians of Religion