• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Books set in China/Japan?

Idril Silmaure

Idril Silmaure

New Member
Hi, I was wondering if anybody knew any good books that are about China, or Japan, preferably of the historical and/or adventure kind but I'm interested in any really.
I just finished reading 'The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure' (Adam Williams), which is about 1900 China, and the Boxer Rebellion, a perhaps little known time of Chinese history, at least to Westerners. Anyway I really enjoyed it and I'm interested in reading anything else along these lines, set in China or Japan!

Was also wondering if anyone else had read 'The Palce of Heavenly Pleasure'? And what they thought? :)
 
I'd like to recommend the last book I read, actually:
Soseki Natsume's "Kokoro"
It might not be quite what you want, as it's a very person and emotion focused novel, mostly about friendship and loneliness. It's from around 1914 or so, and a reason I think it might be of interest to you is that it gives you a wonderful, intimate portrait of people whose norms and values are utterly different from ours. There's a few historical issues creeping in as well, mainly Emperor Meiji's death, which has a strong impact on everyone.
And besides all that, it's just a remarkably good read, by far the most emotionally involving novel I've read in a long time.

You might want to look into Lafcadio Hearn. He was an American* who moved to Japan and wrote a large amount of texts about it, describing many facets of life there for the western world. I believe his ghost stories/fairytales are what's most popular though.

I recently stumbled upon this site: http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Japanese.html which gives introductions to a number of Japan's "biggest" writers.

As for China, I must plead ignorance. You might want to look into Gao Xingjian, who won the Nobel Prize in 2000. I got his "Soul Mountain" from the library yesterday, but haven't started on it yet.

*Not quite, apparently. I looked it up: he was born in Greece, moved to Ireland at 6 and to America at 19. A cosmopolitan then.
 
Thanks, "Kokoro" sounds very much like what I'm looking for actually..I like the emotional/personal thing in novels, and I suppose my main interest in the Oriental theme is the fact that it involves people with such different cultures and traditions and views on life to the British/American, etc.
Lafcadio Hearn also sounds interesting, so I'll definately look out for both. :)
 
White Swans is a great memoir of the Cultural Revolution and its effects from the prerevolutionary days of aristocratic affluence through the 1960s or 70s. I also recommend the novel White Tiger, which is a detective novel authentically set in the high cadres of Chinese government in the 80s, with reference to historical events. I love that book.

A contemporary Japanese writer whose work is deeply immersed in the culture is Banana Yoshimoto. She has about 5 slim novels out and is very popular in Japan.
 
Amy Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club' has certain segments set in China, during the Japanese invasion (I presume this was some time during World War II, although I confess to being historically ignorant in this regard).

Phil
 
I read a book called "Deception", by Eleanor Cooney and Daniel Altieri once. I think they wrote other books about China together too.
 
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. Wonderful gem of a book. It's about two young men sent into exile during the Chinese cultural revolution and their discovery of books and more.
 
I read Memoirs of a Geisha, when I was about 11, and was perhaps a little too young for some of the content! Nevertheless, I absolutely loved it, it's an amazing book and I'd recommend it for anyone interested in Oriental culture/history. :)
 
If you like mysteries, a good character-driven mystery set in Japan is Laura Joh Rowland's The Samurai's Wife. She has written a whole series, in fact, with the samurai Sano Ichiro acting as detective in 17th-century Japan. Lots of facts about the culture and time period as well, which makes it excellent historical fiction.
 
For China I would recommend The Noodle Maker by Ma Jian: It's a small collection of stories written about by the fictional writer in the main plot, which all interlink and tell the 'truth about living in China'. In parts it can be quite funny.

As for Japan, along with Memoirs of a Geisha I would recommend the book I'm currently reading, Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka: I haven't read much of it yet, but it's set towards the end of the 1800s and is generally about Samurais, geishas and details some of the traditions as well as having an interesting plot.
 
I can reccommend a modern thriller type if you like that sort of thing. Out by Natsuo Kirino

Mao's Last Dance by Li Cunxin

Wild Swans

There are more but my brain is fading.
 
Barry Eisler's Rain Series takes place mostly in Japan. They are thriller types about an assassin. Not completely what you were looking for, but you said any...
Hard Rain
Rain Storm
Rain Fall
Killing Rain
 
An Artist of the Floating World and When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. Japan and China respectively.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top