Fiction by Chinese authors
... and ethnic Chinese authors living overseas
Novels set in China/Hong Kong/Tibet
Authors | C | G | H | J | L | M | S | T | W | X | Y | Z | Novels about Chinese people living overseas
CAO, Xuequin
The story of the stone [CLA]
Penguin, 1971
Considered one of the greatest works of Chinese literature, this five-part story charts the changing fortunes of the Jia family. It sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries, even murder - within the context of the Buddhist understanding that karma determines the shape of our lives.
Inheritance
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004
From the acclaimed Chinese-American author, a story of two sisters and the deadly rivalry that comes to separate them. Beginning in 1925, it tells the story not only of one family, but of China across the turbulent years of the 20th century, through war, revolution, occupation and exile.
CHOA, Carolyn
The Picador book of contemporary Chinese fiction [SS]
Picador, 1998
An anthology of Chinese stories written since the demise of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Offering an insight into a changing culture, this collection concentrates on the literature arising from China in the 1980s.
GAO, Xingjian (China/France) *
Buying a fishing rod for my grandfather
HarperCollins, 2005
A selection made by the author of his six favourite short stories, none of which have ever been published before in English. Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom.
One man's bible
Flamingo, 2002
Nobel Prize winner, 2000
The novel moves between the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution insanities in the China of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the tentative, limited liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s, through the eyes of an unnamed narrator. A moving and unprecedented insight into the character of modern China.
Soul mountain
Flamingo, 2001
Gao journeyed into the remote mountains and ancient forests of Sichuan in southwest China. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain. Part travel diary, part philosophy, part love story, "Soul Mountain" is a novel which journeys deep into the heart of modern-day China.
GUO, Xiaolu (China/UK)
20 fragments of a ravenous youth
Chatto & Windus, 2008/Vintage, 2009
A brave young woman negotiates Beijing life in search of love and friendship in this daring novel from the Orange Prize- shortlisted author of 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers'.
UFO in her eyes
Chatto & Windus, 2009
A tale of the unexpected from Orange Prize shortlisted Xiaolu Guo, whose novel is set in a peasant village in China in the year 2012.
Village of stone
Chatto & Windus, 2004/Vintage, 2005
Coral and her Frisbee-obsessed boyfriend Red live on the ground floor of a cramped tower block in the megalopolis that is modern-day Beijing. The epitome of disaffected, unfulfilled youth, their already fragile existence is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious fishy package.
HUI, Zhou Wei
Marrying Buddha
Robinson, 2005 (sequel to Shanghai baby)
Coco leaves Shanghai for New York a decision that leads her through love, desire, and spiritual awakening. In Manhattan she meets both Muju and Nick and she is caught up in the intensity and passion of the two relationships. Coco discovers she is pregnant, but has no idea of whether it is Muju or Nick who is the father.
Shanghai baby
Robinson, 2001
This semiautobiographical novel explores the conflicting feelings involved in love and passion. Coco is a would-be novelist, working as a Shanghai cafe waitress, who is torn between two lovers - one impotent, the other passionate. Torn between two lovers, and tormented by her deceit, her unfinished novel and her entangled feelings Coco starts to break down.
JIAN, Ma (China/England) *
Beijing coma
Chatto & Windus, 2008
As the millennium draws near, Dai Wei, a pro-democracy protestor who was shot during the demonstration at Tiananmen Square in 1989, has been in a coma for almost a decade. As he wakes, he realises that the rich imaginative world afforded to him as a coma patient is a startling contrast with the death-in-life of the world outside.
The noodlemaker
Chatto & Windus, 2004
Written in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, 'The Noodle Maker' is a virtuoso piece of red humour - a darkly funny novel about the absurdities and cruelties of life in modern China.
Stick out your tongue
Chatto & Windus, 2006
Banned in China in 1987, this is the book that set Ma Jian on the road to exile, and still makes it difficult for him to publish his work in China today. Written shortly after the journey to Tibet, he describes in his prize-winning travel memoir "Red Dust". It is an picture of Tibet that is both enchanting and horrifying.
JIN, Ha (China/America) *
The bridegroom
Vintage, 2001
A collection of twelve short stories that capture a China in transition, moving from Maoism towards a more open society. For these men and women, starting to feel the influence of the West, the daily dramas of a system that still struggles to control their every move and thought are made all the more painful by this. Ha Jin celebrates their lives and humanity with the understated humour and simplicity that has won him widespread acclaim.
The crazed
Heinemann, 2002/Vintage, 2003
When Professor Yang suffers a stroke, he appears to lose his mind, pleading with invisible tormentors, denouncing his family, his colleagues, and a system in which a scholar is 'just a piece of meat on a cutting board'. Are these just manifestations of an illness, or is he telling the truth?
In the pond
Vintage, 2001
Themes of personal honour in the face of political honesty are carried forward here in this novel, a close depiction of life in a factory town; the manoeuvring, posturing, petty jealousies & injustices of a man who tangles with party bosses.
War trash
Hamish Hamilton, 2005 (set in China/Korea)
Set in 1951-1953, this is the story of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer sent by Mao with a corps of 'volunteers' to help shore up the communist side in Korea. When Yu is captured by the Americans, his command of English thrusts him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare that defines the POW camp.
LAM, Po Wah
The locust hunter
BlackAmber, 2004
Set in the humid and turbulent landscapes of 1970's Hong Kong, is a coming of age tale that follows the journey of Sundance and his five friends, as they try to avenge the killing of their village's 200-year-old pet tortoise, Lord Baltimore.
LEE, Janice Y.K (America/Hong Kong)
The piano teacher
HarperPress, 2009
Sometimes the end of a love affair is only the beginning. It's 1952 and 32-year-old Claire arrives in Hong Kong with her dull husband. She takes a job as a piano teacher to the daughter of a wealthy family. She soon becomes intrigued by the family's unconventional and charismatic driver, Will Truesdale.
LI, Yiyun (China/America)
A thousand years of good prayers
Fourth Estate, 2006 Orange
Award for New Writers shortlist 2006
In this prize-winning collection of short stories, Yiyun Li brings us a modern China facing up to a complex history of repression and guilt
The vagrants
Fourth estate, 2009
In a provincial town in China, a young woman is sentenced to death for her loss of faith in Communism. The citizens stage a protest & the town goes through uncertainty, hope & fear until eventually the rebellion is brutally suppressed. We follow the pain of the girl's parents, the hopes of the leaders of the protest & their families.
LIANG, Diane Wei
The eye of jade [CRI]
Picador, 2007/2008
SPOKEN WORD
'The Eye of Jade' offers a fascinating glimpse of city life in modern China. Liang captures vividly Beijing's bustle and noise, from seedy gambling dens and cheap noodle bars to the splendour of the Forbidden City.
Paper Butterfly [CRI]
Picador, 2008
In the outback in China, Lin, a political activist arrested after the Tiananmen massacre, is released. Haunted by memories of his time in prison - and the events and people that put him there - Lin heads for the country's capital to confront his demons.
LIANKE, Yan
Serve the people!
Constable, 2007
Banned in its native land for its depiction of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution, this novel tells the story of the bored wife of a military commander who artfully seduces a peasant soldier.
MIN, Anchee (China/America) *
Empress Orchid
Bloomsbury, 2004
In the final days of the Chinese empire, Orchid, a beautiful 17-year-old from an aristocratic but impoverished family, is pushed into the maelstrom of politics when she is chosen to be a lower-ranking concubine of the emperor.
The last Empress
Bloomsbury 2007/2008
SPOKEN WORD
In this sequel to the novel 'Empress Orchid', Anchee Min brings to life one of the most important figures in Chinese history, a very human leader who assumes power reluctantly, and who sacrifices all she has to protect both those she loves and her doomed empire.
Wild ginger
Women's Press, 2002
Wild Ginger is the intense and erotic love story of Maple and Wild Ginger, set against the brutal backdrop of China' s Cultural Revolution. Maple sees her friend Wild Ginger become the star of the Little Red Guards. When Maple and Evergreen plan to leave Shanghai together for a life in rural China, Maple underestimates both Wild Ginger's feelings of betrayal and the horrific way she will use her political power to stop them.
RONG, Jiang
Wolf Totem
Hamish Hamilton, 2008/2009
Man Asian Literary Prize - Winner, 2007
Chen Zhen volunteers to live in a remote settlement on the border of Inner and Outer Mongolia. There, he discovers life of apparent idyllic simplicity based on an eternal struggle between the wolves and the humans in their fight to survive. Chen learns about the spiritual relationship which exists between these adversaries.
SA, Shan
The girl who played go
Chatto & Windus, 2003/Vintage, 2004
In the Place of a Thousand Winds, a 16 year-old Chinese girl beats all-comers at the game of go. One of her opponents is a young Japanese officer of the occupying power. As their two stories unfold, the Japanese army moves inexorably through their huge land, leaving blood and destruction in its wake.
SEE, Lisa (France/America) *
Dragon bones [CRI]
Century, 2003/Arrow, 2004
David Stark, international attorney, and Liu Hulan, inspector for the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing, are assigned to investigate a series of murders on the Yangtze River. They discover a plot that jeopardises both their homelands.
Peony in love
Bloomsbury 2007/2008
'Peony in Love' is a powerful and haunting love story steeped in the richness and magic of 17th century China by the best-selling author of 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'.
Snow Flower and the secret fan
Bloomsbury, 2006
A story of two extraordinary women surviving in a time of strict rules and ancient customs. With the eye of a historian and the vibrancy of a true storyteller, Lisa See has written a mesmerising novel filled with colour, fascinating detail and heartfelt drama.
SIJIE, Dai (China/France) *
Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress
Vintage, 2003
Without betraying the truth of what happened, Dai Sijie transforms the bleak events of China's Cultural Revolution into an enchanting and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit and the magical power of great storytelling.
Mr Muo's travelling coach
Chatto & Windus, 2005
A Chinese Don Quixote following the peripatetic misadventures of Mr Muo, China' s first psychoanalyst. It' s over ten years since Muo has visited his native China. He' s been in Paris, exploring his subconscious and devouring the works of Freud and Lacan. But he knew the idyll couldn't last. When Muo hears that his first great love has been thrown into a Chinese jail for selling a newspaper article to the foreign press, he feels he must rush home and rescue her. He returns to a China where everyone is corruptible, provided you find the right bribe.
Once on a moonless night
Chatto & Windus, 2009
Comprising ancient texts and fables, stories within stories, and a young man's desperate search for his father's legacy, this beguiling tale has the enigmatic mystery of Eco's 'The Name Of The Rose', with the modernity and tenderness of the film, 'Lost in Translation'.
SUE, Chun
Beijing doll
Abacus, 2004
Banned in China for its candid exploration of a young girl' s sexual awakening yet widely acclaimed as being ' the first novel of ' tough youth' in China'. Beijing Doll drives a daring path through China' s rock ' n' roll subculture, where a disaffected generation spurns tradition for lives of self-expression, passion, and music.
TEI, Chiew-Siah
Little hut of leaping fishes
Picador, 2008
Set against the backdrop of an ever changing China, this novel tells a compelling story of childhood, family and ambition
TONG, Su
Binu and the Great Wall {Canongate myths series}
Canongate, 2007/2008
In Peach village, crying is forbidden, but as a child, Binu never learnt to hide her tears. Shunned by the villagers, she faced a bleak future, until she met Qiliang, an orphan who offered her his hand in marriage.
My life as emperor
Faber, 2004
Opening with a child' s ascension to the Chinese throne, this novel charts the complexities of courtly life, as a boy of few talents is suddenly thrust into a position of power. The dramatisation of the dark side of nation building, this is also a deft exploration of the failings of human nature.
WONG, David T.K. (Hong Kong/UK)
John dies at the end [SF]
Permuted Press, 2007
WU, Fan
February flowers
Picador, 2007/2008
'February Flowers' is a finely written coming-of-age novel that tells the story of a bond between two very different girls in modern China. It is a meditation on forbidden love, loss and redemption, and how a background shapes a life.
XIAOLONG, Qiu (?/America) *
A case of two cities [CRI]
Sceptre, 2007/2008
Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is summoned by an official of the Party to lead a highly charged corruption investigation. The tentacles have spread through the police force, the civil service, the vice trade and deep into the criminal underworld.
A loyal character dancer [CRI]
Soho Press, 2002
Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau and Inspector Catherine Rohn of the US Marshals service must work together to trace the missing wife of a key witness in a criminal case in the US. The Triads may have infiltrated the police and even the Chinese government, so for whom is he working?
Death of a red heroine [CRI]
Soho Press, 2001
When the body of a prominent Communist Party member is found, Chief Inspector Chen is told to keep the party authorities informed about every lead. When his investigation leads him to the decadent offspring of high-ranking officials, he finds himself instantly removed from the case.
The Mao case [CRI]
Sceptre, 2009
Tucked away from the building sites of modern Shanghai are the beautiful mansions once owned by the smartest families in 1930s China. They have since been bought by rich businessmen and high-ranking members of the Communist Party. All except one.
Red Mandarin dress [CRI]
Sceptre, 2008
With the possibility of a serial killer stalking Shanghai, Inspector Chen is pulled back to work. Struggling with a breakdown under the combined pressure of his academic deadlines and the case, he must try to stop the killer under the most unexpected circumstances.
When red is black [CRI]
Sceptre, 2007
Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau takes a vacation, partly because he's been made an offer he can't refuse by a Triad-connected businessman. His partner, Detective Yu, is left in charge of a murder investigation. However, it's only when Chen returns that the culprit is apprehended.
XINRAN
Miss Chopsticks
Chatto & Windus, 2007/Vintage, 2008
From the author of 'The Good Women of China' comes the uplifting story of three sisters who, like so many migrant workers in today's China, leave their peasant community to seek their fortune in the big city.
YAN, Geling (China/America) *
The lost daughter of happiness
Faber, 2002
Narrated in a haunting voice that mulls over painful truths of the past, this is an unflinching, erotic tale of forbidden love in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. Fusang is a Chinese girl who is shanghaied from her village and brought to San Francisco, where she enters a seedy underworld.
The uninvited
Faber 2006/2007
Dan Dong's life takes a series of unexpected twists upon his discovery that, simply by posing as a journalist, he can eat exquisite gourmet meals free of charge at state-sponsored banquets. But the secrets Dan overhears at these events eventually lead him down a twisted, intrigue-laden path.
YAN, Mo
Big breasts and wide hips
Methuen, 2006
In a country where men dominate, this novel is first and foremost about women. As the title implies, the female body serves as the book's most important image. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900. Married at 17, she has nine children, only one of whom is a boy. He is the narrator of the book.
Red sorghum
Arrow, 2003
Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.
YING, Hong (China/England) *
K: the art of love
Black Swan, 2004
Set in 1930s China, this true story is a tragic tale of romance, sexual desire and ultimately death. Julian Bell, the darling of the Bloomsbury set, arrives in China and is hungry for experience. He finds it in the form of the beautiful Lin Cheng.
Peacock cries
Marian Boyars, 2004
In this novel of a spiritual quest in the face of economic development, protagonist Liu, a Beijing scientist, discovers that she is the reincarnation of a prostitute and that Yueming, a painter born at the same time as Liu, is the reincarnation of a Buddhist priest.
ZHAOYAN, Ye (China/?) *
Nanjing 1937: a love story
Faber, 2003
Set on the eve of the Rape of Nanjing - when Japanese troops invaded this historic capital city, massacred hundreds of thousands, and committed thousands of rapes. Nanjing 1937 is a tender and humorous story of an impossible love and a lively, detailed historical portrait of a people on the verge of destruction.
ZHONGSHU, Qian (China)
Fortress besieged
Allen Lane, 2005 (first published 1947)
Set on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, this work recounts the exuberant misadventures of the hapless hero Fang Hung-chien, who after aimlessly studying in Europe at his family's expense, returns to Shanghai armed with a bogus degree from a fake university
Novels about Chinese people living overseas
GUO, Xiaolu (China/UK)
A concise Chinese-English Dictionary for lovers
Chatto & Windus, 2007
What happens when a Chinese woman falls in love with an Englishman and realises that learning the language doesn't necessarily lead to understanding? Funny, sexy, romantic and sad, 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers' is a love story for the modern age.
SPOKEN WORD
HONG, Liu
Startling moon
Review, 2002
Looking back to a past of rich but suppressive tradition, and forward to a very different China, this novel is the story of Taotao's quest to know her own heart - the blossoming of a passion which will lead her to risk all that she holds dear.
LO, Vyvyane
Breaking the tongue
W.W. Norton, 2005
TAN, Amy (America/America) *
The bonesetter's daughter
Flamingo,2001
Spoken word cassette/CD
Set in contemporary San Francisco and pre-war China, The Bonesetter' s Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit. With great warmth and humour, Amy Tan gives us a mesmerising story of a mother and daughter discovering together that what they share in their bones through history and heredity is priceless beyond measure.
The hundred secret senses
Flamingo, 1996
Olivia is only 5 years old when Kwan, her 17 year-old half sister arrives from China and turns her world upside down. Olivia wants only to lead a normal American life, but her childhood betrayal of Kwan has lasting consequences.
The kitchen god's wife
HarperCollins, 1991/Flamingo, 1992
The story takes us back to Shanghai in the 1920s, through World War II, and the harrowing events that led to Winnie' s arrival in America in 1949. The story is one of innocence and its loss, tragedy and survival and, most of all, the enduring qualities of hope, love and friendship.
Saving fish from drowning
Fourth Estate, 2005 {Set in Burma}
On an ill-fated art expedition of the Southern Shan State in Burma, 11 Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas morning tour - and disappear. Through the twists of fate they find themselves deep in the Burma jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader.
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