Welcome back to Book Break!
Today we are travelling the globe again, because in this video I've got a selection of nine
brilliant books by Chinese authors.
And this list was so hard to narrow down.
There are so many great classics just to get started with, so many wonderful books that
I remember reading at school, like Wild Swans by Jung Chang, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
There's also tons of books by Lisa See, who's an American writer but is really influenced
in her writing by having a Chinese great-grandfather, and exploring her heritage there.
So, there were just so many to get started with. But I've tried in this list to come
up with a selection of nine books that you might not have read yet.
So starting with some nonfiction books, the first book I've got here is the ultimate classic.
This is The Art of War by Sun Tzu. So this is an ancient Chinese military treaties, dating
all the way back to the 5th century BC. And it's attributed to the Chinese military leader
Sun Tzu, though some parts are believed to be possibly even 100 years older than that.
And this book is still so influential, in warfare but also in business tactics, in legal
strategy, The Art of War was referenced once in an episode of The Sopranos in 2001, which
apparently sent sales through the roof, but it has just always been an incredibly influential
book, so it's a really interesting one to learn from.
And now another classic, but this time a slightly more modern classic, this one was published
in the 70s, is The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. So Maxine Hong Kingston was
born in the US, after her parents immigrated from China, but in this memoir, she recounts
the China of her mother's memories. And it's weaved throughout with myths and folklore
about this woman warrior who took her father's place in battle.
And so the memoir is all about her struggling to find out her identity, caught between these
two differing cultures, but also about how these narratives of women warriors can filter
into our everyday lives.
So there's a reason that this has been hailed as a feminist classic.
And then another memoir I have to recommend is The Barefoot Lawyer by Chen Guangcheng.
So Chen is this incredibly inspiring man. He was born the son of a poor farmer in rural
China, he ended up blinded from an illness as an infant, but he went on to educate himself
and fight for the rights of his country's poorest people. In particular, women who'd
endured forced sterilisation because of China's one-child policy.
And for this he was captured and beaten by Chinese authorities, he ended up being placed
under house arrest, until one morning he literally climbed over the heavily guarded wall and
escaped.
So it's a super tense and thrilling story, but it's also so inspiring and passionate,
because Chen is just this man who has never accepted limits.
And then the last nonfiction book I've got on here is Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang.
So this is a really interesting look at China in the noughties, which is fascinating in
its own right, and then also to see quite how rapidly change has happened in China over
the last decade.
So in the noughties, millions of migrant workers left their rural towns every year to come
and find work in China's cities, and to become part of China's economic boom, working incredibly
hard for very little money.
So in this book, Chang looks at this through the lives of two women who become part of
this workforce behind the gadgets and toys and designer clothes that we then buy.
So even ten years on, this is still an incredibly relevant read.
And now, moving to fiction, starting with Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang. So
this is a short story collection that's been translated from its original Chinese, and
the title story in the collection is basically about a love story that triumphs in wartime
Hong Kong.
And there was actually a quote from the academic scholar Nicole Huang that first really made
me want to read this collection. She said that Eileen Chang's 'most important literary
legacy for the 1940s is her construction of an alternative narrative of war, one that
contradicted the grand narratives of national salvation and revolution that dominated the
wartime literary scene.' So that really caught my interest and this collection is definitely
another modern classic.
Next, one for sci fi fans is The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. So this is another one
that was originally written in Chinese and has been translated into English and into
other languages, and is the first in a trilogy. And this book is split between two timelines,
one in present day and one in the 60s during the Cultural Revolution. And it follows the
efforts of these disillusioned scientists imploring alien life to come to Earth and
redeem humanity. And this is hard sci-fi so if that's your thing, this might be the trilogy
you're looking for.
One of my favourite books of the last few years was Everything I Never Told You by Celeste
Ng. So this is about a Chinese-American family living in 70s Ohio, and right at the beginning
of the book, their middle daughter Lydia is found drowned in the lake. And the police
think it must have been a suicide, the family are convinced she never would have done that
and they think it's a murder. And we then jump around in time quite a lot, going back
to discover more about this family, right back to the parents first meeting, learning
about their relationship with their other children, also the things that Lydia was hiding
from them. And it is just so emotional and so beautifully written. Each of the characters
feels so real, that even when they do these seemingly unforgivable things, you completely
empathise with them.
And another of my recent favourites was Severance by Ling Ma, which is a really unusual book.
It's got kind of Station Eleven vibes, in that it's a very literary apocalyptic story.
And this is another one that jumps around in time, kind of before, during and after
the outbreak of this epidemic, that turns people essentially into zombies, though they're
characterised in a very unique way that I won't say too much about because it's really
original. And a lot of the story just takes place before this outbreak, and in those sections,
it's just this fun offbeat story about this young woman living in New York, hating her
job, exploring her different romantic relationships. So when you put that all together, it's this
really effective satire of modern urban life, and one of the most fun and original stories
I've read in a long while.
And then finally, a debut novel that has been everywhere at the moment is Braised Pork by
An Yu. So this one starts when a woman walks into the bathroom of her Beijing apartment
to find her husband dead in the bathtub. And next to him in the water is a piece of paper
with a drawing on it. So she becomes obsessed with this and the book kind of follows her
mission to find out what this image meant. And this is a very surreal book, quite philosophical,
that's ultimately about a young woman finding a new and deeper sense of herself.
So those are just nine fantastic books by Chinese authors, but I would definitely love
more of your recommendations. So do leave a comment below letting me know some of your
favourites, and of course give this video a thumbs up if you liked it, and hit that
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Coming up next week we're doing a video all about the beautiful children's books that
you want to keep with you throughout your life, so make sure you don't miss out on that
one. And in the meantime you can always go and follow us over on Instagram @bookbreakuk.
See you next time.