by laurence coulton
There is no denying that 2021 was not a great year to travel. As border restrictions continue in many places due to the pandemic, China was among the countries that remained closed to foreign visitors.
You are reading: New books on china
However, it seems that the extra time at home over the past 18 months has allowed some of today’s most talented Chinese writers to produce a truly exceptional range of fiction and non-fiction.
With that in mind, and to help avid Sinophiles around the world navigate the best books about China in 2021, we’ve put together a list of our year’s favorites across a variety of genres:
best memories
House of Kwa by Mimi Kwa
mimi kwa’s family memoir accomplishes the rarest of feats in writing of any kind: hitting every note on the emotional spectrum between front and back covers. TV presenter, actress, life coach and journalist, as well as a brilliant author, Kwa explores the rich history of Ella’s family in the Kwa household from southern China to Western Australia via Hong Kong.
His tumultuous family history guides the reader through the equally turbulent narrative of 20th-century China, illuminated by the colorful and intricate characters that make up the Kwa clan. Chief among them is Mimi’s father, Francis, whose complex relationship with his daughter is House of Kwa’s Locomotive Force.
best futurology
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan
What happens when you combine the talents of an AI visionary and former president of Google China with the biting mind of a celebrated Chinese science fiction novelist?
the answer is what the authors themselves call “scientific fiction”, a collection of 10 short stories set 20 years in the future from san francisco to mumbai, each with its own parable about the potential and pitfalls of intelligence artificial.
ai 2041: ten visions for our future is educational, entertaining, and cautionary. Lee and Chen’s message is clear; Ultimately, the choice is ours as to whether AI technology empowers us or destroys us.
best translation
Monkey King: Journey to the West edited, translated and introduction by Julia Lovell
In the past it would have been blasphemous to question whether Arthur Waley’s Monkey was the best English translation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West, but with the arrival of Julia Lovell’s remake it’s now a legitimate question.
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That’s because the esteemed historian and author has done more than simply translate the beloved Chinese original by cutting, reshaping, and distilling the best parts into a book a quarter the length.
Monkey King: Journey to the West is more concise in its narrative, clearer in its character arc, and less burdened by the sometimes cumbersome detail of its medieval font. it’s a 21st century retelling, a fitting update to a folk tale that continues to evolve over time.
best mystery
Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder by Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen novels are more than detective fiction. Throughout the series, the crimes Chen seeks to solve are inextricably intertwined with China’s historical context, drawing readers into the often opaque and dark world of Chinese bureaucracy and politics.
In the 12th and final installment, Inspector Chen, ostracized from the front line of the Shanghai Police Department thanks to a convenient promotion to a bureaucratic position, must find an alternative way to investigate the crimes that grip him. to the city’s high society, especially when one murder strikes too close to home.
best historical nonfiction
Destination Peking by Paul French
In his earlier novels The City of Demons and Midnight in Beijing, the Frenchman brought to life in radiant detail for an English-speaking audience the sometimes glamorous, sometimes venal world of expatriate communities in the Republican era. from shanghai and beijing.
destination peking offers more of the same, but this time in the form of 18 biographical essays that follow notable foreign visitors to beijing during the interwar period. From American socialite Wallis Simpson to journalist Edgar Snow, the cast of characters is diverse, but French’s multi-sensory experience of a lost city and era is constant throughout.
best cookbook
At the Chinese Table: A Memoir with Recipes by Carolyn Phillips
There are many Chinese cookbooks today, and many first-hand accounts from foreigners traveling in the East. What isn’t there, however, is as thoughtful a combination of the two as Carolyn Phillips’s latest book on the Chinese table, elegantly weaving together the story of her own personal odyssey to Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s with 22 delightful recipes.
Complete with charming illustrations drawn by Phillips herself, At the Chinese Table is a story of love, family, history and acceptance, united by the universal language of food.
best historical fiction
The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel
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Set during World War II, The Last Rose of Shanghai is a dynamic love story juxtaposed with the desperation of the city’s Japanese occupation. The book’s protagonists form an unlikely pair: a Jewish refugee expelled from Nazi Germany and a wealthy young Chinese heiress who owns a once-in-fashion Shanghai club.
As the war intensifies, so do conditions in the city, but the forces that separate their world also manage to bring them closer. The struggle of the novel’s characters is palpable, its romance utterly believable, but Randel’s true achievement is shedding light on an often overlooked setting of the war and the Jewish experience in Shanghai.
best romance
Our Violent Ends by Chole Gong
Chloe Gong’s imaginative tale of Romeo and Juliet in these violent delights was so brilliantly executed that it became a New York Times bestseller, and the follow-up, Our Violent Ends, is a worthy sequel to complete. the duology with style.
juliette and roma continue in their roles as enemies and lovers as the blood feud between their gangs continues to tear 1920s shanghai apart. looms over the city once more, and the relationship between their communities will be forced into new configurations as they hurtle towards the book’s explosive climax.
best science fiction
Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge (translated by Jeremy Tiang)
First published in China in 2006 and translated into English by Jeremy Tiang for the first time this year, China’s Strange Beasts is a novel with an intriguing structure. Written as a bestiary, a catalog of the strange beasts that occupy the fictional city of Yong’an, each chapter is a stand-alone case study of the creatures that share urban space with their human counterparts.
yan ge imbues its anonymous narrator, an amateur cryptozoologist and newspaper columnist, with a wry curiosity that adds a sense of black mystery to the yong’an cityscape, creating an irresistible atmosphere for this bizarre investigation to unfold. . . Quirky, endearing, and at times unnerving, Strange Beasts is a contemporary addition to a literary culture with a penchant for challenging narrative forms.
best academic nonfiction
Confucius’ Courtyard: Architecture, Philosophy and the Good Life in China by Xing Ruan
the treatise by shanghai jiao tong university architecture professor xing ruan has a central idea. If he wants to understand Chinese architecture, no, if he wants to understand Chinese history, culture, and philosophy, he must start with the courtyard.
according to xing ruan, this architectural feature recurs throughout china’s past and present in the temple, imperial palace, market, and home. Confucian moral ideology and Chinese cosmology are reflected in it, a central space connecting heaven and earth. Confucius’ Courtyard is a thorough and revealing exposition of Chinese thought, elegantly accompanied by the author’s own architectural sketches.
special mention
Beautiful Country: A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood by Qian Julie Wang
There had to be room on this list for a beautiful country, even though it’s nominally a book about America rather than China. Although set in Meiguo, the beautiful country from which the book takes its name, Qian Julie Wang’s poignant childhood memoir focuses heavily on the Chinese experience, in this case, her family’s painful journey as immigrants. undocumented immigrants striving to make a new life for themselves in new york.
Told from the author’s perspective when she was a seven-year-old girl, the age she was when her family left Beijing for the United States in 1994, A Beautiful Country is masterfully written and conceived, drawing attention to inhumanity. of a system in a more poignant way today than ever.