Historical Fiction Asia

As a child, isolated from the world in a secretive military encampment with her distant mother, she turns for affection to a sympathetic soldier and to the only other girl in the camp, forming two friendships that will shape the rest of her life. As a young adult in New York, cut off from her native country and haunted by the scars of her youth, she is still in search of a home. She falls in love with a married woman who is the image of her childhood friend, and she follows strangers because they remind her of her soldier.

On the fringes of the Great Spice Road, Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land - but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. Then a royal messenger summons her ailing father to court, and Maia seizes her chance. Disguised as a man, she travels to the Summer Palace in her father's place to compete for the emperor's favour, and the coveted position of imperial tailor. If Maia's ruse is discovered, her life will be forfeit. But if she wins, she will achieve her greatest dream.

On a far ridge of a Himalayan hill station, a crumbling ruin holds devastating secrets. Spanning 70 years of India’s turbulent history, A House Called Askival, follows three generations of an American family from Partition to the present day. An estranged daughter returns for her father’s death, but can the past be healed? A legendary cookbook holds a fateful recipe, but what dark story does it hide? A winged creature arrives, but does it know the 100th name of God?

Hyderabad, India. 1798. Beatrice Sinclair, a grieving young widow facing financial destitution, has travelled from Hampshire to Hyderabad to visit her brother, an employee of the British East India Company. There, she is astonished to discover that he has married a beautiful Indian girl and lives with his wife's extended family in a dilapidated palace, the Jahanara Mahal - famed for the theft of a fabled diamond many years ago. As an outsider in an unfamiliar world, Bee faces many challenges - not least of all building a new and meaningful life after the heartbreak she has endured.

Vietnam, 1969: Die Schwestern Trang und Quỳnh wachsen in einem Dorf auf, wo sie die Reisfelder ihrer verarmten Eltern bestellen. Als sie hören, in Saigon wäre es leicht, Arbeit zu finden, machen sich die jungen Frauen auf den Weg. In Saigon lernt Trang einen amerikanischen Soldaten kennen und stürzt sich in den Wirren des Krieges in eine Affäre, die nicht ohne Folgen bleibt.

Told in interwoven narratives that glide seamlessly between the gritty streets of New York, the lush and dangerous landscape of Hawaii, and the horrors of the Japanese internment camps and the bombing of Hiroshima, Shadow Child is set against an epic sweep of history. Volcanos, tsunamis, abandonment, racism, and war form the urgent, unforgettable backdrop of this intimate, evocative, and deeply moving story of motherhood, sisterhood, and second chances.

Brushstrokes in Time, written by Sylvia Vetta, is a memoir of fictional Chinese artist, Little Winter, written for her American daughter. It takes the story of Communist China beyond the death of Mao and for the first time in fiction shows the birth of the radical art movement, The Stars, in 1979. Her haunting love story connects us to this time of hope for freedom of expression in China, and to a man frustrated by "being kept in small shoes".

Introducing the Wu family: father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao. We meet them as they arrange to fully sever ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, and to begin a new, free life in the United States.

In the tradition of In the Time of the Butterflies and The Kite Runner, a tender, evocative novel about the years leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war. On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries.

Author Ha Jin’s celebrated works have claimed several top literary awards, including three Pushcart Prizes. In Nanjing Requiem, the Japanese are poised to invade Nanjing. The dean of Jinling Women’s College, Minnie Vautrin mistakenly believes her American citizenship will protect the school. But Vautrin’s life becomes a daily struggle as the school becomes a refugee camp - and the slaughter of refugees begins.

China, 1937. When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, 19-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of students, faculty, and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China's western provinces, a journey marred by the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the refugees who are at risk; Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure: a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.

France, 1918. In the final days of the First World War, Pauline Deng runs away from her uncle’s home in Paris to evade a marriage being arranged for her in Shanghai. To prevent the union, she needs the help of her cousin Theo, who is working in the French countryside as a translator for the Chinese Labour Corps.

In Jazz-Age Shanghai, Jingwen dances at the cabaret by day and runs errands for a powerful gang by night. But when a mysterious attacker steals faces from her fellow dancers, Jingwen is plunged into a world of powerful businessmen, silver-limbed gangs and vengeful gods as she tries to uncover the culprit.

William Ping’s millennial life revolves around eating at restaurants, posting online about eating at restaurants, then overanalyzing it. This changes unexpectedly when a dinner with his Chinese girlfriend’s family goes sideways and his insecurity about his biracial identity and his ignorance of his own Chinese heritage overflow. During a much-needed break from the dinner table, Will is visited in the men’s room by a sarcastic, bullying spirit named Mo.

A blind obsession. A driving ambition. A relentless, unrestrained, single-minded pursuit of a shiny metal. These are the symptoms of a condition known as gold fever, and, like Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, American mining engineer Captain Humbert Reynolds has got it bad. Possible side effects include: temporary insanity, a propensity for violence, and death.

It is 1917, and Korea has yet to be divided into North and South. With the threat of famine looming, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver's courtesan school in cosmopolitan Pyongyang, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. Jade flees to Seoul, where she forms a deep friendship with an orphan boy called Jung Ho, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets. As Jade becomes a sought-after performer with unexpected romantic prospects, Jung Ho is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence.

The three tales in this audiobook are adapted from stories told by the peasants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They are drawn from some books I found in shops when I visited the former USSR in 1988 as part of a citizen diplomacy group. I was intrigued by these folktales, since my paternal grandmother lived for some time in Odessa in the Ukraine. Also, I found these stories share a common theme - the poor peasant is able to succeed despite obstacles against an unfair ruler.

The inspiration behind the Academy Award-winning Studio Ghibli film, The Boy and the Heron — Anime master Hayao Miyazaki's favorite childhood book and a beloved Japanese classic, this uplifting coming-of-age story brings philosophy, history and wonder together, available in English for the first time.

The Chandaria family - emigrants from the Indian enclave of Nairobi - have flourished in America. Premchand, the father, is a doctor who has worked doggedly to grow his practice and give his family security; his wife, Urmila, runs a business importing artisanal Kenyan crafts; and their son, Sunil, has been accepted to a PhD program in philosophy at Harvard. But the parents have kept a very important secret from Sunil: his cousin, Bimal, is actually his older brother. When this hidden history is revealed by an unforeseen accident, and the entire family is forced to return to Nairobi.

When Ran, the Shadow Warrior, is dispatched to investigate rumors of an invasion massing to the north, he signs on as protection for a trade caravan. But once underway, the caravan is attacked by an overwhelming force of slavers who take Ran and several others captive. Dragged into the bowels of the earth as slave labor for a despot-in-exile eager to reclaim his throne, Ran must make a desperate escape with his friends if he has any hope of uncovering the truth about the invasion above ground.