At a glance

10 best asian novels of all time

A Dream of Red Mansions

Cao Xueqin (1791)

With a cast of more than 400 characters, this episodic novel written in the vernacular rather than classical Chinese tells of two branches of an aristocratic family with a tragic love story at its humane heart.

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry (1995)

Set in India during the Emergency of 1970 (a period marked by political unrest, torture and detentions), Mistry is critical of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi, although she is never named. Four characters from very different backgrounds are brought together by rapid social changes.

Rashomon

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1915)

The author published Rashomon in a university magazine when he was just 17. Just 13 pages long, it comprises seven statements regarding the murder of a samurai and his wife's disappearance.

One Thousand and One Nights

Anonymous (first published in English 1706)

Packing in crime, horror, fantasy and romance, it influenced authors as diverse as Tolstoy, Dumas, Rushdie, Conan Doyle, Proust and Lovecraft.

Heat and Dust

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975)

In this compelling novel by the only person to have won both the Booker Prize and an Oscar, a woman travels to India to learn the truth about her step-grandmother and her life under the British raj of the 1920s.

All About H. Hatterr

G.V. Desani (1948)

It's the glorious mash-up of English and Indian colloquialisms that makes this book, about the son of a European merchant and a Malayan lady, such a wild, whimsical delight.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami (1994)

This labyrinthine and hallucinogenic novel gets going when Toru Okada's cat disappears in suburban Tokyo. He consults a pair of psychic sisters who appear to him in dreams and reality. Although Murakami's plot meanders, it never loses its pace or humanity.

Spring Snow

Yukio Mishima (1969-71)

Before committing ritual suicide in November 1970, Mishima posted this tetralogy of novels to his publisher. It's a saga of 20th-century Japan, in which a law student imagines a school friend constantly reincarnated.

Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie (1980)

Magic realism meets postcolonial India in the ambitious, colorful and clever novel that was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize.

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy (1997)

This intense and exquisitely written tale of fraternal twins unfolds against a backdrop of Communism, the caste system, and Christianity in Kerala from the 60s to the 90s.

The Telegraph

(China Daily European Weekly 05/23/2014 page26)