book reviews

“Five Star Billionaire” And Other Must-Read Books

Tash Aw, a writer born in Taipei who grew up in Kuala Lumpur before moving to England, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novel, “Five Star Billionaire,” a fictional self-help book for social climbers...

Prison of the Mind: Liao Yiwu’s Memoir of Incarceration

At The New Yorker, Ian Buruma reviews Liao Yiwu’s prison memoir For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet’s Journey through a Chinese Prison. The book was rewritten twice after its first and second drafts were...

Revisiting Leslie Chang’s “Factory Girls”

At Tea Leaf Nation, Gloria Wang surveys Chinese reactions to Leslie T. Chang’s Factory Girls, recently released in simplified characters five years after its original English-language publication. The book follows two...

“Darkness Outside The Night” for China’s Youth

NPR’s Louisa Lim interviews graphic novelist Xie Peng, whose first novel, “Darkness Outside The Night,” is described as, “a psychological journey into the world of young Chinese,” reflecting the...

‘The Dark Road’ and Ma Jian on Censorship

Following the UK release of his latest novel, The Dark Road, the Index on Censorship talks to exiled writer Ma Jian about his career, Beijing’s longstanding ban on his work, the value of free expression, the legacy of...

A Look at “Behind the Red Door: Sex in China”

China is in the midst of a sexual revolution. Before you conjure up images of the countercultural movement that swept the west half a century ago, clarification is needed: China is in the midst of a sexual revolution with...

New Book Lauds China’s Investment in Global Resources

Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist best-known for her argument against international aid to Africa in Dead Aid, has published a new book called Winner Take All: China’s Race For Resources. In a Youtube trailer  for her...

Eight Questions: James Fallows, ‘China Airborne’

China Real Time blog interviews James Fallows about his new book China Airborne and about the aviation industry in China: You highlight the dramatic improvement of China’s airlines as one area of particular success. Are there...

Book Review: They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?

In his tenth novel They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, Christopher Buckley plays off of stereotypes of China to create a satirical portrait of U.S-China relations. Buckley explores the worst case scenario with inspiration from the...

Evan Osnos: Five Books about China

On his New Yorker blog, Evan Osnos recommends five books about China: The following are all by deeply knowledgeable writers with original observations (rather than a pastiche of the conventional wisdom), and, most unusually,...

Eating More Bitterness: China’s Urban Immigrants

At Miller-McCune, China Beat editor Maura Cunningham surveys a number of books focusing on the flow of workers into China’s cities. Michelle Dammon Loyalka’s ‘Eating Bitterness’—featured on CDT earlier...

Eating Bitterness: China’s Great Urban Migration

April Rabkin reviews Michelle Dammon Loyalka’s new book, ‘Eating Bitterness’, for the San Francisco Chronicle: Being a migrant in China is a bit like being an illegal immigrant in California. Essentially, when...

Jonathan Fenby: “China’s Dominance is Not Inevitable”

At The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, journalist and author Jonathan Fenby challenges the assumption that China’s continued rise is inevitable, and catalogues the dizzying range of problems facing its next generation of...

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