The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost incorporates Korean folk tales, ghost stories, and myth into a phenomenal depiction of epic tragedy. Written by a zainichi, a permanent resident of Japan who is not of Japanese ancestry, the novel tells the story of Mandogi, a young priest living on the island of Cheju-do. Mandogi becomes unwittingly involved in the Four-Three Incident of 1948, in which the South Korean government brutally suppressed an armed peasant uprising and purged...

Passing, Posing, Persuasion interrogates the intersections between cultural production, identity, and persuasive messaging that idealized inclusion and unity across Japan’s East Asian empire (1895–1945). Japanese propagandists drew on a pan-Asian rhetoric that sought to persuade colonial subjects to identify with the empire while simultaneously maintaining the distinctions that subjugated them and marking their attempts to self-identify as Japanese as inauthentic, illegitimate for...

The Girl with Ghost Eyes is a fun, fun read. Martial arts and Asian magic set in Old San Francisco make for a fresh take on urban fantasy, a wonderful story that kept me up late to finish.”-#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia BriggsIt’s the end of the nineteenth century in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and ghost hunters from the Maoshan traditions of Daoism keep malevolent spiritual forces at bay. Li-lin, the daughter of a renowned ...

One of the Nobel Prize Winners in LiteratureIdeal for fans of Chinese Playground, We Are Party People, Death of Me, Skate with Me, A Farmer’s Life for Me, and similar worksWritten by today’s most revered, controversial, and feared Chinese novelistMo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is a remarkable story. The absurd, real, comical, and tragic are combined into a fantastic read. The hero—or antihero—is Ximen Nao, a landowner k...

**Originally banned in China but later named one of that nation’s most influential books, a searing novel that portrays one man’s transformation from the spoiled son of a landlord to a kindhearted peasant.“A work of astounding emotional power.” —Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress**From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zh...

The haunting memoir of a girl growing up in the Moso country in the Himalayas -- a unique matrilineal society. But even in this land of women, familial tension is eternal. Namu is a strong-willed daughter, and conflicts between her and her rebellious mother lead her to break the taboo that holds the Moso world together -- she leaves her mother's house.

**A NEW YORK TIMES TOP BOOK OF THE YEARWASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK“Mo Yan’s voice will find it’s way into the heart of the American reader, just as Kundera and García Márquez have.” —Amy Tan author of The Joy Luck ClubFrom the Nobel-prize winning author of Red Sorghum and one China’s most revered writers, a novel exploring the One-Child Policy**Before the Cultural Revolution, Gugu, narrator Tadpole’s feisty aunt, is a resp...

The Corpse Walker introduces us to regular men and women at the bottom of Chinese society, most of whom have been battered by life but have managed to retain their dignity: a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a public toilet manager, a leper, a grave robber, and a Falung Gong practitioner, among others. By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, Liao Yiwu managed to get his subjects to talk openly and sometimes hilariously about their lives, desires,...

From the acclaimed author of Peach Blossom Pavilion comes a lush and lyrical novel of East and West--and of one young woman's search for her heart's true calling. . .When twenty-year-old Meng Ning declares that she wants to be a Buddhist nun, her mother is aghast. In her eyes, a nun's life means only deprivation--"no freedom, no love, no meat." But to Meng Ning, it means the chance to control her own destiny, and to live in an oasis of music, art, and poetry far from her p...

In Eliot Pattison's Skeleton God, Shan Tao Yun, now the reluctant constable of a remote Tibetan town, has learned to expect the impossible at the roof of the world, but nothing has prepared him for his discovery when he investigates a report that a nun has been savagely assaulted by ghosts. In an ancient tomb by the old nun lies a gilded saint buried centuries earlier, flanked by the remains of a Chinese soldier killed fifty years before and an American man murdered only hours ear...

**“A love story between friends. It is so well written. [Kyung-sook Shin] has this use of language that is just beautiful and poetic. It’s a great book if you’re looking to escape.” —Chelsea Handler, #1 New York Times bestselling authorHow friendship, European literature, and a charismatic professor defy war, oppression, and the absurd**Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I’ll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly litera...

Written for a young audience, this intense memoir explores the harsh realities of life on the streets in contemporary North Korea.Every Falling Star is the memoir of Sungju Lee, who at the age of twelve was forced to live on the streets of North Korea and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains.Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was lik...