Literary / Asian literature

Chinese Whiskers

by Pallavi Aiyar

Chinese Whiskers by Pallavi Aiyar is a charming fable set against the landscape of contemporary Beijing, seen through the eyes of two cats. Soyabean is a middle class cat looked after by a grandmother...

Moth Smoke

by Mohsin Hamid

Available for the first time from Riverhead-the debut novel from the bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid's deftly conceived first novel, immediately marked him as an...

Ru: A Novel

by Kim Thuy

At ten years old, Kim Thúy fled Vietnam on a boat with her family, leaving behind a grand house and the many less tangible riches of their home country: the ponds of lotus blossoms, the songs of soup-vendors....

After the Quake: Stories

by Haruki Murakami

The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals...

The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

by Shehan Karunatilaka

Winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize * Winner of the $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature ** A Publishers Weekly "First Fiction" Pick for Spring 2012 * “A crazy ambidextrous delight. A drunk...

The Noodle Maker

by Ma Jian & Flora Drew

From Ma Jian, the highly acclaimed Chinese dissident, comes a satirical novel about the absurdities of life in a post-Tiananmen China.

Two men meet for dinner each week. Over the course of one of these drunken...

Madras on Rainy Days

by Samina Ali

Layla is torn among clashing identities--dutiful Muslim daughter and free, independent American woman. When she is nineteen, her parents inform Layla that a marriage has been arranged for her to an Indian man...

River of Smoke

by Amitav Ghosh

A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book for 2011

The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are...

The Sly Company of People Who Care

Ondaatje Prize 2012

by Rahul Bhattacharya

In flight from the tame familiarity of home in Bombay, a twenty-six-year-old cricket journalist chucks his job and arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerizing beauty. Amid beautiful,...

The Diving Pool

by Yoko Ogawa & Stephen Snyder

The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authors

From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility,...

Ilustrado

Man Asian Literary Prize 2008

by Miguel Syjuco

Garnering international prizes and acclaim before its publication, Ilustrado has been called “brilliantly conceived and stylishly executed . . .It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and...

The Housekeeper and the Professor

by Yoko Ogawa

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.  She is an astute young Housekeeper—with a ten-year-old...

Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh

At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew,...

Hotel Iris

by Yoko Ogawa

A tale of twisted love from Yoko Ogawa—author of The Diving Pool and The Housekeeper and the Professor. In a crumbling seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk...

Beijing Coma

by Ma Jian & Flora Drew

Dai Wei has been unconscious for almost a decade. A medical student and a pro-democracy protestor in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, he was struck by a soldier’s bullet and fell into a deep coma. As soon as...

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Commonwealth Best First Book Prize 2009

by Mohammed Hanif

A Washington Post, Rocky Mountain News, Boston Globe Best Book of the Year

Intrigue and subterfuge combine with bad luck and good in this darkly comic debut about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and a conspiracy...

The Bathing Women: A Novel

by Tie Ning, Hongling Zhang & Jason Sommer

FROM AWARD-WINNING and bestselling Chinese writer Tie Ning comes a stunningly original novel that captures the spirit of a new generation of young professionals in contemporary China. The Bathing Women follows...

The Story of My Assassins: A Novel

by Tarun J. Tejpal

“Spine chilling … written with flair and clear-eyed acidity.”

— The New Yorker

Based on actual events, The Story of My Assassins tells the story of a journalist who learns that the police have captured...

The Cloud Messenger

by Aamer Hussein

A beautifully poignant paean to lost love and the passing of time.

The Thing about Thugs

by Tabish Khair

A subversive, darkly comic novel of a young Indian man's misadventures in Victorian London as the city is gripped by a series of gruesome murders. Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, this sly...