Conquest of PagesBooks by Asian authors: a reading list by country
Asia holds more than half of the world’s people and a literary history that stretches back thousands of years: classical poetry, epics, the modern novel and today’s bestsellers in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and dozens of other languages. Translation matters more here than anywhere — a book’s English edition is often one of several, so the translator’s name is worth noticing.
How to use this list
Asia has 48 countries in the read-around-the-world challenge. Below is one well-loved book by an author born in 22 of them — a place to start, not a verdict. The continent is vast, so pick by country rather than by “Asian literature”. A contemporary novel and a classic from the same country make a good pair if you want to see how a literature has changed.
A book to start with, country by country
| Country | A place to start |
|---|---|
| Afghanistan | The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini |
| Bangladesh | Lajja — Taslima Nasrin |
| Cambodia | First They Killed My Father — Loung Ung |
| China | The Three-Body Problem — Liu Cixin |
| India | The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy |
| Indonesia | This Earth of Mankind — Pramoedya Ananta Toer |
| Iran | Persepolis — Marjane Satrapi |
| Iraq | Frankenstein in Baghdad — Ahmed Saadawi |
| Israel | A Tale of Love and Darkness — Amos Oz |
| Japan | Norwegian Wood — Haruki Murakami |
| Lebanon | The Prophet — Khalil Gibran |
| Malaysia | The Garden of Evening Mists — Tan Twan Eng |
| Nepal | Arresting God in Kathmandu — Samrat Upadhyay |
| Pakistan | The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Mohsin Hamid |
| Philippines | Noli Me Tángere — José Rizal |
| Saudi Arabia | The Dove's Necklace — Raja Alem |
| Singapore | Crazy Rich Asians — Kevin Kwan |
| South Korea | The Vegetarian — Han Kang |
| Sri Lanka | The English Patient — Michael Ondaatje |
| Syria | Death Is Hard Work — Khaled Khalifa |
| Türkiye | My Name Is Red — Orhan Pamuk |
| Vietnam | The Sorrow of War — Bảo Ninh |
Your pick
No single obvious starting point for these — any author born in the country counts. Search a library catalogue for “literature of” the country, or look at its national prize winners.
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Bahrain
- Bhutan
- Brunei
- Cyprus
- Georgia
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Maldives
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- North Korea
- Oman
- Palestine
- Qatar
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Timor-Leste
- Turkmenistan
- United Arab Emirates
- Uzbekistan
- Yemen
Keep going
Other regions: Africa · Europe · North America · South America · Oceania. The whole challenge is explained on Read around the world.
In Conquest of Pages each book you finish plants a forest where its author was born, so a list like this one turns into a map you can watch fill in. It is free, and your library stays on your device.