Fiction > Chinese Fiction

Set in 1967, at the peak of the Mao cult, Serve the People! tells the story of the bored young wife of a military commander who seduces a young peasant soldier. The two lovers soon discover that the sacrilegious act of breaking a statue of Mao dramatically increases their desire for each other.

From the bestselling author of Red Azalea and Empress Orchid comes the poignant story of a friendship of a lifetime

Peony has neither seen nor spoken to any man other than her father, a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Nor has she ever ventured outside the cloistered women's quarters of the family villa. As her sixteenth birthday approaches, she finds herself betrothed to a man she does not know, but Peony has dreams of her own. Her father engages a theatrical troupe to perform scenes from "The Peony Pavilion", a Chinese epic opera, in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. 'Unmarried girls should not be seen in public,' says P... read more

Peking, 1914. Eight-year-old Eastern Jewel, daughter of Prince Su's last concubine, peers from behind a carved screen as her father makes love to a bound-footed servant girl. Overhead the gathering clouds foreshadow the end of peace, and the start of Eastern Jewel's own tumultuous story Eastern Jewel is an intoxicating heroine - a feisty, rebellious woman who refuses to accept mutely the docile, subservient role that early twentieth-century Chinese society prescribes for her. Her early sexual curiosity sees her banished as a young ... read more

Breakthrough novel by the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. Soul Mountain is a picaresque novel of immense wisdom and sparse beauty, bursting with knowledge and experience and portraying a culture as vast and fascinating as the history of humankind itself. In China in the early eighties, the novel's central character embarks on a journey cross-country in search of the mysterious Soul Mountain. Along the way he collects stories, lovers, spiritual wisdom and undergoes myriad experiences that are sometimes violent,... read more

Dai Wei is a medical student and a pro-democracy protestor in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Caught by a soldier's bullet, he falls into a deep coma; as soon as the hospital authorities discover he is an activist, his mother is forced to take him home. She allows pharmacists access to Dai Wei's body and sells his urine and his left kidney to fund special treatment from Master Yao, a member of the outlawed Falun Gong sect. But during a government crackdown, the Master is arrested and Dai Wei's mother - who has fallen in love with hi... read more

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Who would believe that reading a novel written in deliberately bad English could be as uplifting an experience as this? But Xiaolu Guo, writing in English for the first time, has pulled it off in a novel that has the potential to be as successful as A History of Tractors in Ukranian or Lost in Translation. Her narrator, who calls herself Z because no one can pronounce her name, is a 23-year-old Chinese language student who has come to London to learn English. When the book begins she can barely ask for a cup of tea, but when l... read more

A Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside, he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman who died during childbirth, shares a tent with a nomad who is walking to a sacred mountain to seek forgiveness for sleeping with his daughter, meets a silversmith who has hung the wind-dried corpse of his lover to the walls of his cave, and hears the story of a young female incarnate lama who died during a Buddhist initiation rite. In the thin air of the high plateau, the divide be... read more

Coral and her frisbee-obsessed boyfriend, Red live on the ground floor of a cramped tower block in the megalopolis that is Beijing. The very epitome of disaffected, unfulfilled youth, their already fragile existence is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious fishy package - as the smells of the sea flood her home, Coral is transported back to a traumatic childhood dominated by solitude, fear and shame. Born on a boat during a storm, and orphaned soon after, Coral was raised by silent grandparents amongst the stern and superstit... read more

Dan is an unemployed factory worker who learns to sneak into state-sponsored banquets so he can eat exquisite gourmet meals free of charge. But the secrets Dan overhears at these events eventually lead him down a twisted, intrigue-laden path. When he becomes privy to a scandal that runs from the depths of society up to its highest rungs, Dan must find a way to lay bare the corruption - without revealing the dangerous truth about himself. This is a thrilling rollercoaster ride through the new world of boomtown China. First publis... read more

From the celebrated author of "Raise the Red Lantern" comes his first novel in almost ten years--a chilling yet enormously entertaining tale about a pampered and nave 14-year-old prince, who finds himself, suddenly and unexpectedly, named Emperor of China. First published in Chinese 1992; this translation 2005.

Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing interest to historians, poets, and dramatists. Writing some 1,200 years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on this rich literary heritage to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. Luo's novel offers a startling and unsparing view of ho... read more

Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 b.c.-a.d. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing interest to historians, poets, and dramatists. Writing some 1,200 years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on this rich literary heritage to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. Luo's novel offers a startling and unsparing view of ho... read more

In 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime. Jiazhi's life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin's bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death... read more

A Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside, he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman who died during childbirth, shares a tent with a nomad who is walking to a sacred mountain to seek forgiveness for sleeping with his daughter, meets a silversmith who has hung the wind-dried corpse of his lover to the walls of his cave, and hears the story of a young female incarnate lama who died during a Buddhist initiation rite. In the thin air of the high plateau, the divide be... read more

From the award-winning author of Red Dust, comes a virtuoso piece of 'red humour' - a darkly funny novel about the absurdities and cruelties of life in modern China. Every week, a writer of political propaganda and a professional blood donor meet for dinner. They are unlikely friends - one of them tortured by his 'art', the other fat and wealthy from the earthy business of providing spare blood for the citizens of China. Over the course of one especially gastronomic evening, the writer starts to complain about his latest Party ... read more

Set in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the 1930s, The Girl who Played Go is a haunting tragedy, a shocking tale of love and war reflected in the age-old game of go. In the Square of a Thousand Winds, snow falls as a sixteen-year-old Chinese girl beats all-comers at the game of go. One of her opponents is, unknown to her, a young Japanese officer of the occupying power, rigidly militaristic, imbued with the imperial ethic, but far from home and intrigued by this young opponent. Their encounters are like the game itself, restrained, s... read more

This is the highly-anticipated novel from the best-selling author of "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Bonesetter's Daughter". On an ill-fated art expedition of the Southern Shan State in Burma, eleven Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas morning tour - and disappear. Through the twists of fate, curses, and just plain human error, they find themselves deep in the Burma jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages and... read more

Brilliant and original, 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers' introduces a remarkable first collection of stories about China from an author set to become a major literary talent. In this extraordinary first collection, Yiyun Li brings us a modern China facing up to a complex history of repression and guilt. In 'Immortality', winner of the Paris Review prize, a young man bears a striking resemblance to the dictator, and so finds a strange kind of calling. In 'Extra', first published in the New Yorker, a Chinese woman, alone in middle... read more