Fiction by non-Chinese authors
... set in China / Hong Kong, or about Chinese people
Authors | A | B | C | E | F | G | H | L | M | O | P | S | V | W |
HarperCollins, 2006
This novel begins 400 years after eight women pledge themselves as sisters in the name of jin-shei, the unbreakable bond. In 18th century Syai, and its capital city of Linh-an, things have changed beyond recognition.
The secrets of Jin-Shei
HarperCollins, 2004
A sweeping epic set in medieval China; it is the story of a group of women, the Jin-Shei sisterhood, who form a uniquely powerful circle that transcends class and social custom.
AW, Tash [Malaysia/UK]
The harmony silk factory
Fourth Estate, 2005/Harper Perennial 2005
Whitbread Book Awards First novel award winner 2005
SPOKEN WORD
The Harmony Silk Factory is a devastating love story set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade.
BRADBY, Tom
The master of rain [CRI]
Corgi, 2003
Set in Shanghai during the 1920s, 'The Master of Rain' is a spooky tale of murder and the experiences of Richard Field, an officer with the local police force. Field soon realises that in Shanghai everything has a price with human life coming cheap.
BUCK, Pearl S. [USA] (new ed.)
The good earth
Pocket, 2005
A Chinese rags-to-riches saga set in the reign of the last emperor.
CALDER, Jenni (Scotland)
Luath Press, 2006
Eleanor Dickinson escapes Scotland and the inevitability of the direction of her life to the Eastern strangeness of China. In leaving behind the physical closeness of her relationships with her partner, brother and family, she is able to analyse and confront 'the mush of dissatisfaction' that had been expanding to fill her life.
CLAVELL, James (Australia/America) *
Flame, 1999
Over 100 years have passed since Dirk Struan founded Hong Kong's oldest trading company. But now, the Noble House is in danger. As Hong Kong itself becomes a deadly playground, rival tai-pans, gather for the kill.
EPSTEIN, Jennifer Cody
Penguin, 2008
In 1913 an orphan girl boards a steamship bound for Wuhu in South East China. Left in the hands of her opium-addicted uncle she is delivered to The Hall of Eternal Splendour which, with its painted faces & troubling cries in the night, seems destined to break her spirit. Yet the girl survives & one day hope appears.
FURNIVALL, Kate
The Russian concubine
Sphere, 2007
This novel is set in war-torn China, with a star-crossed love story at its centre.
GREENWAY, Alice
White ghost girls
Atlantic, 2006
Two sisters - one theatrically bold, one cautious. Two Chinas - one ancient and timeless, one modern and urgent. Two romances - one wordless, one clamorous. One summer in Hong Kong in the 1960s sees their father called away to the carnage in Vietnam.
HARRISON, Kathryn (America/America)
* Fourth Estate, 2001 Spoken word cassette
From the author of the bestselling memoir The Kiss, this novel takes us to Shanghai as the 19th century ends. Beautiful, charismatic and destructive, May escapes an arranged marriage in rural China for life with a philanthropic Australian.
HILL, Justin (Bahamas/England) *
Weidenfeld, 2001/Phoenix, 2002
In this novel, ordinary people struggle to come to terms with a China that has radically changed since 1949. It maps out the contours of human drama in a work which seduces with its laughter even while it devastates with its tragedy and sorrow.
Abacus, 2004
An epic novel about the extraordinary true life of a courtesan who happened also to be the country's first woman poet. Hill won the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize in 2003, and was shortlisted for The Thomas Cook Award with Ciao Asmara.
LANCHESTER, John (England/England) *
Fragrant harbour
Faber, 2002
This is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span 70 years in Asia. The complacency of colonial life in the 1930s; the horrors of the Japanese occupation during World War II; and the post-war boom and transformation of Hong Kong all surface in this epic novel.
LEWIS, Simon (Wales)
Bad traffic [CRI]
Sort of Books, 2008
Inspector Jian is a Chinese cop from the Siberian border who thinks he's seen it all. But his search for his missing daughter brings him to the meanest streets he's ever faced - in rural England.
LIM, Catherine (Malaysia/Singapore) *
The bondmaid
Orion, 1998
Set in Singapore in the 1950s, The Bondmaid tells the moving story of Han; sold, aged 4, as a slave into the House of Wu, where she forms a close bond with the young heir. It chronicles the power of one woman's love - right to its terrifying climax.
Following the wrong god home
Orion, 2001
A modern love story of East meets West set in Singapore. Yin Ling is a dutiful wife and mother but when she meets outspoken American professor Ben Gallagher, her life is overturned.
The song of Silver Frond
Orion, 2003
One morning in Singapore, The Venerable One - a wealthy, respected, handsome Chinese patriarch, head of a large household of three wives & many children & grandchildren - takes a walk by a cemetery. There, a young village egg-seller, Silver Frond, is amusing herself with a comic song-and-dance act about him.
LINDLEY, Maureen
The private papers of Eastern Jewell
Bloomsbury, 2008
Based on the real life story of Yoshiko Kawashima, Manchurian princess turned Japanese spy, this novel is a breathless journey of sexual manipulation and self-discovery that spans three countries and a world war.
Chinese whispers [CRI]
Coronet, 2004
Peter May's terrifying new China thriller pits Li Yan and Margaret Campbell against an unscrupulous foe who could prove to be their deadliest enemy yet.
OAKES, Andy
Citizen one [CRI]
Pan 2008
Sun Piao is released from Ankang, the psychiatric hospital for dissidents, and is demoted to working in the vice squad - a non-job, since Chinese authorities claim there is no vice in the People's Republic. But before long, Piao is trying to solve a string of murders, in which elite army officers are implicated.
Dragon's eye [CRI]
Dedalus, 2003/Pan, 2005
Sun Piao is a senior investigator with the Chinese police who has been ordered to investigate the murder of eight individuals who are found chained together in the mud of the Huangpu River. Sun Piao's job is made doubly difficult from the start with the chief medical examiner refusing to carry out autopsies.
PARSONS, Tony
My favourite wife
HarperCollins, 2008
Hot shot young lawyer Bill Holdon and his wife Becca move with their four year-old daughter to the booming, gold-rush city of Shanghai. It is a place of opportunity and temptation, where fortunes are made and foreign marriages come apart in spectacular fashion.
SAMPSON, Catherine
The pool of unease [CRI]
MacMillan, 2007/Pan, 2008
When a British man's headless corpse is found in an icy lake in Beijing it is unclear whether his death is linked to a series of brutal attacks on local women. Journalist Robin Ballantyne is trying to find out.
The slaughter pavillion [CRI]
MacMillan, 2008
A murder mystery set in the sweltering heat of a Beijing summer, against the backdrop of the Olympic Games.
SMITH, Sid (England/England) *
China dreams
Picador, 2007
Describing one young man's descent into madness and desperation as his love affair with a young Chinese woman is brutally cut short by the girl's father, this is the story of Tom, living in a Brixton squat, as he retreats into an imagined world of graphic and unsettling Chinese fables.
A house by the river
Picador, 2003
John and Grace Gerrard grew up on the wild streets of Hong Kong and Canton, and this understanding of China proves crucial when they travel among the peoples and landscapes of the interior. Struggling to reconcile her mixed heritage, Grace provokes a murderous conspiracy.
VITTACHI, Nury
Mr Wong goes west [CRI]
Polygon, 2008
C.F. Wong is not a fan of Western culture, so it seems like his worst nightmare when he gets an assignment to deal with the British royal family. He heads to Buckingham Palace to do a feng shui reading in an attempt to end the Windsors' anni horribiles. But a bomb on his plane might just cause the wheels to come off the plan.
The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics [CRI]
Polygon, 2008
All hell's breaking loose in Shanghai. A group of hyper-vegan terrorists are threatening to blow up the city. There's a potentially explosive white elephant on the loose and the world's two most important presidents are due to visit.
The palace of heavenly pleasure
Hodder, 2003/Coronet, 2004
Set in the year 1900 in China as the Boxer Rebellion erupts, a host of innocents, fanatics, sinners and lovers are drawn to the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure. Here the fury of the East meets the ideals of the West in a brothel overlooking an execution ground.
The Dragon's tail
Hodder, 2007
Two lovers are torn apart by politics and history in this epic romance of 20th century China, during a period of dizzying change.
The Emperor's bones
Hodder, 2005
Beautiful, headstrong and unconventional, Catherine Cabot is 20 years old when she arrives in China. Against an uneasy political background, a bittersweet triangular love affair develops between Catherine, Edmund and George Airton - and, all the while, she tries to uncover the truth behind her past.
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