ASIA

=Asia=

Non-fiction
Jiang, Ji-li. //Red Scarf Girl : A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution.// The author tells about the happy life she led in China up until she was 12-years-old when her family became a target of the Cultural Revolution, and discusses the choice she had to make between denouncing her father and breaking with her family, or refusing to speak against him and losing her future in the Communist Party.

Hicks, George. //The Comfort Women : Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War.// Over 100,000 women across Asia were victims of enforced prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Forces during World War II. Until as recently as 1993 the Japanese government continued to deny this shameful aspect of its wartime history. George Hicks's book is the only history in English regarding this terrible enslavement of women.

Chen, Da. //China's Son : Growing up in the Cultural Revolution.// Da Chen describes his experiences growing up during the cultural revolution in China during the 1960s, and details his life after he made the decision to drop out of school and join a street gang.

Chen, Da. //Colors of the Mountain.// A Chinese American lawyer shares his memories of growing up in rural China during Mao's Cultural Revolution, describing how he struggled to overcome persecution and adversity to achieve an education, both in China and the U.S.

Talty, Stephen. //Escape from the Land of Snows : The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero//. Chronicles the Dalai Lama's dangerous escape from Tibet in 1951, describing how he traveled over dangerous mountains to find sanctuary in India after invading Chinese troops tried to drive him out of power.

Wu, Harry and Carolyn Wakeman.// Bitter Winds : A Memoir of my Years in China's Gulag.// In 1960 Harry Wu was arrested by Chinese authorities and without a trial spent nineteen years in prison labor camps. He chronicles that and stories of other prisoners after his escape to America.

Yang, Belle. //Baba : A Return to China Upon My Father's Shoulders.// Belle Yang retells the stories told to her by her father, recounting his youth in northern China in the 1930s and 1940s.

Fiction
Murphy, Yannick. //The Sea of Trees.// After her liberation from a Japanese prison camp in Indochina at the end of World War II, Tian, a young French-Chinese girl, supports her family in Communist Saigon as a translator and travels to Biarritz to arrange for their escape.

Nanji, Shenaaz. //Child of Dandelions.// In Uganda in 1972, fifteen-year-old Sabine and her family, wealthy citizens of Indian descent, try to preserve their normal life during the ninety days allowed by President Idi Amin for all foreign Indians to leave the country, while soldiers and others terrorize them and people disappear. =Violence=

Non-fiction
Hersey, John. //Hiroshima.// An account of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, from the viewpoint of the people who lived through it.

Fiction
Bell, William. //Forbidden City.// Teenager Alex is thrilled to join his father--a cameraman for the Canadian Broadcasting Company--on a trip to China, but when they witness the massacre at Tiananmen Square, they are forced to flee the country.

Busfield, Andrea. //Born under a Million Shadows//. Fawad, an optimistic Afghan boy living in Kabul, loses his father, brother, and sister to the Taliban regime, but when his mother is hired as a housekeeper for a charismatic Western woman, Fawad is exposed to endless curiosities, though another calamity may cost Fawad his faith in his country.

Greenway, Alice. //White Ghost Girls.// The children of a war-photographer father and beautiful but remote mother, Frankie and Kate, two American sisters, grow up in Hong Kong during the turmoil of the Maoist revolution of the late 1960s.

Non-fiction
Keat, Nawuth. //Alive in the Killing Fields: Surviving the Khmer Rouge Genocide.// Keat, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge invasion of Cambodia, describes his experiences, discussing the killings of his family members, his enslavement, the relationships that were formed between people from his community, and more.

Schanberg, Sydney. //The Death and Life of Dith Pran.// Recounts the final days before the fall of Phnom Penh and of life under the Khmer Rouge as seen through the eyes of two men who shared a unique commitment to each other, and was the basis for the motion picture, //The Killing Fields.//

Fiction
McCormick, Patricia. //Sold.// A novel in vignettes, in which Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old girl from Nepal, is sold into prostitution in India.

Non-fiction
Chang, Iris. //The Rape of Nanking : the Forgotten Holocaust of World War.// Details the massacre that took place in December 1937 when the Japanese army overthrew the ancient city of Nanking, China, and raped, tortured, and murdered over 300,000 civilians; examining the atrocity from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers, the Chinese civilians, and the Europeans and Americans who created a safety zone for survivors.

Fiction
Ballard, J.G. //Empire of the Sun.// Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents.

B̉ao Ninh. //The Sorrow of War : A Novel of North Vietnam.// Kien spends 11 years after high school recovering bodies of dead soldiers and serving in the North Vietnamese infantry.

Fawcett, Brian. //Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow//. If you're ever haunted by the countless examples of mans inhumanity to man, please read this book. It explores a writers struggles to become an artist in a worldful of atrocities. Fawcett explores the creative process, the global village, the mass man and Cambodia.

Holthe, Tess Uriza. //When the Elephants Dance.// In the final weeks of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, three different Filipino narrators recount the experiences of a people desperately struggling in the midst of the horrors of war.

Ung, Loung. //First They Killed My Father//: //A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.// Loung Ung, one of 7 children of a high-ranking government official in Phnom Penh, tells of her experiences after her family was forced to flee from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, discussing her training as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, and telling of how her surviving siblings were eventually reunited.

Fiction
Buck, Pearl. //The Good Earth.// Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant, rises from poverty to become a rich landowner with the aid of his patient wife in the 1920s.

Markandaya, Kamala. //Nectar in a Sieve : A Novel.// This is the story of a peasant woman in India, married as a child bride to a tenant farmer, working with her husband to wrest a living from land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects. Through years of poverty and disaster, she sees one of her infants die, her daughter become a prostitute, her sons leave for jobs she distrusts--and somehow she survives.

Non-fiction
Mai, Mukhtar. //In the Name of Honor : A Memoir.// Mukhtar Mai chronicles the events surrounding her 2002 gang rape in the impoverished village of Meerwala and her decision to stand up to her attackers, describing how she overcame the fear she felt and how her actions influenced the feminist movement in Pakistan.

Kristof, Nicholas and Sheryl WuDunn. //Half the Sky : Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide// Tells the stories of women in Africa and Asia who have been victims of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality, and shows how girls' education and micro-finance can change their lives while providing a boost to the economies of developing countries.

Fiction
Golden, Arthur. //Memoirs of a Geisha : A Novel.// Nitta Sayuri, a young Japanese woman who was taken from her home at the age of nine and sold into slavery as a geisha, discovers a rare opportunity for freedom when the outbreak of World War II forces an end to the only life she has ever known.

Lord, Bette. //The Middle Heart.// Three Chinese youngsters, Steel Hope, his bookmate Mountain Pine, and Firecracker, a gravekeeper's daughter, vow to remain true to each other and their country, a promise that becomes impossible to keep as war, upheaval, and personal tragedies intrude.

Namioka, Lensey. //Ties That Bind, Ties That Break : A Novel.// Third Sister in the Tao family, Ailin has watched her two older sisters go through the painful process of having their feet bound. In China in 1911, all the women of good families follow this ancient tradition. But Ailin loves to run away from her governess and play games with her male cousins. Knowing she will never run again once her feet are bound, Ailin rebels and refuses to follow this torturous tradition. As a result, however, the family of her intended husband breaks their marriage agreement. As she enters adolescence, Ailin finds that her family is no longer willing to support her.

See, Lisa. //Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.// In 19th-century China, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of 7, is paired with a laotong, "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she's painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes and dreams. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood.

Sheth, Kashmira. //Keeping Corner.// In India in the 1940s, 13-year-old Leela's happy, spoiled childhood ends when her husband since age nine, whom she barely knows, dies, leaving her a widow whose only hope of happiness could come from Mahatma Ghandi's social and political reforms.

Fiction
Desai, Anita. //Clear Light of Day//. Explores the traumatic history of India after the departure of the British in a story of a Hindu family in Old Delhi and the complex relationships that develop among 4 people.

Forster, E.M. //A Passage to India.// Two women come **to** Chandrapore, **India**, and their lack of understanding of the culture causes one of them **to** make an unjust accusation.

Kipling, Rudyard. //Kim.// Kim, an Irish orphan, accompanies a holy man on his journey throughout India and his quest for a mystical river.

Non-fiction
Ung, Loung. //First They Killed my Father : a Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.// Loung Ung, one of 7 children of a high-ranking government official in Phnom Penh, tells of her experiences after her family was forced to flee from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, discussing her training as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, and telling of how her surviving siblings were eventually reunited.

Non-fiction
Zoellner, Tom. //The Heartless Stone: A Journey through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire.// Follows the author across 14 nations and 6 continents to research the mythology and fascination with diamonds, how they have been used to fund civil wars, and the exploitation of diamond workers in India and Africa.

Fiction
Sijie, Dai. //Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.// Two boys, moved to the country for "re-education" as part of Mao's Cultural Revolution, find little to amuse them, but things change when they discover a stash of Western classics in Chinese translation and use the stories of Balzac to capture the attention of the beautiful daughter of the local tailor.

= =

Fiction
Rushdie, Salman. //Midnight's Children.// The story of Saleem Sinal, born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, the moment India became independent. Saleem's life parallels the history of his nation.

Rushdie, Salman. //Moor's Last Sigh.// A family saga reflecting the troubled state of India. The protagonists are four generations of the da Gama, who became wealthy in the spice trade before declining into gangsterism. Their tale is narrated by the family's last descendant and he attributes their fall to bickering, a reflection of Hindu-Moslem strife plaguing India today.