At the beginning of this year, I came across a very interesting book challenge on Instagram, created by Kristin (@ktlee.writes): the Read Asian Authors 2024.

I thought this was a great idea to give my Read the World Challenge a little bit more structure this year, so I decided to adopt it. And it worked. In the end, I read not only the 9 books in the challenge but also 15 books by Asian authors from 10 different countries, making Asia my most-read continent this year, with 32%.

Here’s a list:

• 🇲🇾 The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia)
• 🇦🇫 Dancing in the Mosque, by Homeira Qaderi (Afghanistan)
• 🇻🇳 The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnam)
• 🇯🇵 A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
• 🇯🇵 The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa (Japan)
• 🇰🇷 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster, by Mirinae Lee (South Korea)
• 🇨🇳 Babel, by R.F. Kuang (China)
• 🇰🇵 The Accusation, by Bandi (North Korea)
• 🇸🇬 Now You See Us, by Balli Kaur Jaswal (Singapore)
• 🇯🇵 Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Japan)
• 🇮🇳 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman Rushdie (India)
• 🇰🇷 Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee (South Korea)
• 🇵🇰 Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan)
• 🇮🇳 Malgudi Days, by R.K. Narayan (India)
• 🇨🇳 Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang (China)

Some countries were repeated, and my most read countries in the Asian continent were Japan, South Korea, China and India. It’s interesting to note how these countries’ economic dominance in the continent had an influence on the books I heard about and that I had access to.

Here are some other things that I learned in this process:

1. Translations are hard to come by.

This a problem we faced before. Of the 15 books, only 5 were translations, and the other 10 were written in English, mostly by members of the Asian diaspora or its descendants living in the UK or the US.

I’m making my peace with this fact. As an immigrant living in North America myself, I love to support the work of other immigrants elsewhere. And it might also be that I’m more drawn to these authors because their experiences resonate more with me.

2. Immigration plays a big role.

It’s no surprise then that many of the stories center around the theme of immigration. Of the 15 books, 7 of them had characters immigrating to other countries during the story (8 if you count the fact that Salman Rushdie remembers his time immigrating to the U.S. during his book).

And again, it might be my personal preference – I might as well start a category on this blog for books about immigrants. But in a continent as vast as Asia and with a history as complex as it has (chat GPT tells me that there were 15 major conflicts in the continent in the 20th century alone), it’s no surprise that people are immigrating all over the place, which only makes for more rich and interesting stories.

3. Japan’s imperialism left a huge scar on the continent.

Speaking of wars, I was shocked to learn how many of the characters of these books had their lives completely altered by Japan’s imperialism. Of course, most are fictional stories, but they’re all based on real history.

We can list the two Sino-Japanese wars (both initiated by Japan against China), the annexation of Korea (which displaced large numbers of Korean farmers), the war against Russia to gain control of Manchuria and the occupation of the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia during the World War II.

As it happens most of the time, there was a feeling of superiority, a notion that Japan was “liberating” Asia from Western colonial powers. But in reality, all these events were marked by brutal exploitation, such as the creation of the “comfort houses”, where girls were kidnapped from all parts of South East Asia to serve at the pleasure of the Japanese soldiers fighting in the war.

Of course, we all know how the World War II ended for Japan. But that’s what’s surprising to me: when we talk about Japan and war, all people can remember is the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nobody knows the rest. Over the last decades, Japan was able to reinvent itself as a modern and even “cute” country, a large producer of animes, delicate movies and Hello Kitty culture. Those are all good contributions to the world, but… we kind of need to talk about that bloody past too.

4. Asia is very diverse.

This is no surprise for anyone. But it was really interesting to see how the regional differences translate into different values, cultures and religions. From totalitarian Muslim regimes in Afghanistan to Buddhist teachings in Vietnam, passing by the Catholic Korean community in Japan and Hindu practitioners in India, I’ve read it all.

What about you? What are your favourite book by Asian authors?