An Array of Asian and Asian Ancestry Authors

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This month, the G20 Summit was held in India, with the U.S. president subsequently visiting Vietnam. Also this month, the leader of North Korea met with the leader of Russia — a country partly in Asia. Next month, my New Jersey town’s “AAPI Montclair” organization representing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders will hold several events. Countries such as China and Japan are often in the news, too.

All that is my excuse for writing this week about novels I’ve read by living authors who reside in Asian nations or reside elsewhere but are of Asian or part-Asian descent. I’ll also mention a few Asia-set books by non-Asian writers.

Among the titles that immediately came to mind is The God of Small Things, the 1997 debut novel by author/activist Arundhati Roy of India. It’s a depressingly riveting story featuring fraternal twins and other memorable characters.

I’ve only gotten to one novel so far by Japan’s Haruki Murakami — his intriguing After Dark (2004) that unfolds during a single night. (I’ve also read The Tale of Genji, the 11th-century work by Japan’s Murasaki Shikibu, but she’s not a living author as far as I know. 🙂 )

I recently read (and discussed in last week’s blog post) Nadia Hashimi’s Afghanistan-set The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, an absorbing 2014 debut novel about two women separated by a century. Hashimi’s parents emigrated from Afghanistan a few years before their daughter’s 1977 birth in New York.

Afghanistan-born American author Khaled Hosseini is known for works such as The Kite Runner (2003), also an excellent debut novel — this one set in Afghanistan and California.

Another now-American writer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, was born in Vietnam — the partial setting for his intense/tragic/cleverly crafted novels The Sympathizer (2015) and The Committed (2021).

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Indian immigrants parents who soon moved to the U.S. I enjoyed her novels The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013) as well as her 1999 short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist known for works such as 1989’s The Remains of the Day (which I liked a lot) and 2005’s Never Let Me Go (which I found slow going).

Amy Tan? I’ve read and been impressed with three novels — The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), and The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001) — by that American author of Chinese descent.

Among the novels that have stuck with me by non-Asian living writers using Asian settings are Adam Johnson’s 2012 The Orphan Master’s Son (set in North Korea) and Lawrence Osborne’s 2020 The Glass Kingdom (set in Thailand). I also loved James Clavell’s 1975 Shogun (set in Japan), but that author is no longer with us.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this week’s theme?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Baristanet.com, which has merged with Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a cyber attack and more — is here.

92 thoughts on “An Array of Asian and Asian Ancestry Authors”

  2. Hi Dave,

    Anh Do wrote an enjoyable autobiography called “The Happiest Refugee” that was mostly about being a comedian in Australia, but included the harrowing story of him and his family escaping Vietnam by boat.

    I haven’t read “The Good Earth” yet, but greatly enjoyed “Pavilion of Women” by Pearl S. Buck.

    Of Ishigura, I’ve only read “The Remains of the Day” which I absolutely loved and can’t wait to get to more by that author.

    I second Darlene’s praise of “A Fine Balance”. I read it a few years back but it feels like just yesterday. I doubt that it will ever leave me.

    Sue

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    • Thank you, Susan, for the mentions of those four books — including the enthusiastic seconding of Darlene’s recommendation of “A Fine Balance”!

      “The Remains of the Day” IS a great novel, understated but powerful.

      And some autobiographies can be as compelling as fiction, as it sounds like with “The Happiest Refugee.”

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  3. A bit out of my league here, Dave.
    However, I did read and thoroughly enjoyed Shogun.
    In that vein, I would add “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck. Born in the USA, she also is no longer with us.
    However, she grew up partly in China. Her parents were missionaries.
    I’ll never forget how the wife O-Lan was working in the rice paddies, got up, walked into the house, gave birth, bundled the baby onto her back and went back to the paddies to continue working.
    I seem to remember the juxtaposition between O-Lan and Lotus (Wang Lung’s concubine).
    O-Lan worked hard and had big feet. Lotus’ feet had been bound, and she couldn’t really walk.

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  4. Dave, I’ve never read her novels, but are you familiar with the Chinese American author Eileen Chang (1920-1995)? She wrote in the Chinese language but I believe most of her work has been translated into English.

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  5. Great alliterative theme, Dave. So many great suggestions in addition to several I’ve read too. Been racking my brain for someone not mentioned and eureka…Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni! I’ve read almost her entire oeuvre, noticing she has a 2022 novel I missed. Award winning work for sure.

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  6. Hi Dave, another inspired post that has resulted in an interesting commentary. In addition to the mentions I’ve already made in comments, I learned a great deal about the War in North Korea by reading Jeff Sahara’s The Frozen Hours. His historical novels are bulky but excellent.

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  7. Arthur Golden’s Memoir Of A Geisha is terrific; however, Golden has a very odd history. According to his bio, he grew up in Tennessee, received a degree in art history from Harvard specializing in Japanese art. He spent time in China, worked in Japan etc. I was surprised after reading Ishiguro’s Remains Of the Day and Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, both primarily historical fiction, created by two different authors who you might think have very little in common re the subjects of their books, what a paradox. Would be like Dostoevsky creating a book based on a crime committed in the Ozarks by a hillbilly named Billy Bob Raskolnikov, ha. Great theme Dave. Thanks, Susi

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  8. Unending Love

    I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
    In life after life, in age after age, forever.
    My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
    That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
    In life after life, in age after age, forever.

    Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
    Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
    As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
    Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
    You become an image of what is remembered forever.

    You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
    At the heart of time, love of one for another.
    We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
    Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
    Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

    Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
    The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
    Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
    The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
    And the songs of every poet past and forever.

    ~Rabindranath Tagore

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  10. Another fascinating post Dave. Finally got a moment to re-read it properly. I thought of Shogun, the Remains of the Day and Midnight’s Children. What is interesting is that you have a rich array pf Asian. Asian Ancestry authors, aithors who were born in Asia but whose parents were not, Oswald Wynd comes to mind, writers whpo travelled in Asia and then set books there like Maughan and also authors like Pearl S Buck who grew up in Asia.

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  11. Thank you, Dave, for mentioning so many precious books, which speak about topics “outside our confort zone”! I was especially touched by The Kit Runner and the friendship between two boys of different groups. I could maybe also mention Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary, in which he writes about history of the world through the Islamic eyes.

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  12. Interesting topic, Dave. One for which I come up noticeably empty handed. Even worse, the book that I can’t help but recall is ‘Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel’ by Richard Brautigan. Which is barley, and perhaps only stereotypically Japanese. He wasn’t Japanese – although he did live in Tokyo for a while – and the story is set in the US. Still, it’s the first thing I thought of, and it brought back a memory of an offbeat author whose work I really enjoyed.

    Sadly, he’s no longer with us. He committed suicide on September 16th, 1984.

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  13. A great selection, Kazuo Ishiguro being my favourite of the ones mentioned. His latest book, Clara and The Sun is amazing. I would add to the list, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, an Indian-born Canadian writer. The story is phenomenal, depicting a clear picture of life in India in the 1970s and 1980s.

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  14. Dave, thanks for highlighting contemporary Asian-born authors. I’ve read and enjoyed many of the books you’ve mentioned. I would like to add the 2019 debut novel “Bangkok Wakes to Rain” by Pitchaya Sudbanthad who grew up in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and the American South, and now lives in New York. For me, these stories are important gateways into worlds beyond our borders that reveal our shared humanity. Hopefully, they will also bring us closer together.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! I appreciate the recommendation of “Bangkok Wakes to Rain” — now on my list. 🙂 Pitchaya Sudbanthad has quite a varied geographical background! And I love the thoughts you expressed in your comment’s last two lines.

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  16. I recently read Village Teacher and The Seige of An Loc by Vietnamese author Nguyễn Trọng Hiền. I found both novels fascinating. In addition to the empathetic characters, both novels filled huge gaps in my understanding of the history and the people of Vietnam.

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