Great Books about Asia (fiction and non)
Explore the best books about Asia, featuring must-read fiction and non-fiction titles. Discover captivating stories, cultures, and histories across Asia in this curated reading list.
Book
Yakuza
by David E. Kaplan
"A fascinating study of how criminal enterprise can infect the very heart of modern capitalism. Here is the backstage world of political influence and organized crime in the world's second largest economy... by far the most detailed and even-handed study of this important and neglected subject."--John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Reviews of original edition: "A superb study of Japan's underworld that is both entertaining and revealing. The authors miss none of the color and curious detail of the yakuza style, but at the same time go far beyond surface observations."--Far Eastern Economic Review "The book is laden with fascinating information, some of it heretofore unavailable in English."--Washington Post "Blend the Mafia with the Masons. Let them simmer a while, then fold in the Ku Klux Klan and you'll have the yakuza. . .. Important and timely. . .Yakuza will serve for years as the source document on Japanese organized crime."--San Jose Mercury News "State-of-the-art investigative reporting. . .must reading for those who consider themselves already highly conversant with yakuza activities. . .disturbing."--Journal of Asian Studies
Book
The Japanese Mind
by Roger J. Davies
Offers Westerners an invaluable key to the unique aspects of Japanese culture
Book
Tokyo Suckerpunch
by Isaac Adamson
Meet Billy Chaka, ace reporter for Cleveland's hottest-selling Asian teen magazine. He's brash, savvy, and prone to hair-trigger fits of karate. Billy's in Tokyo to cover the 19-and-Under Handicapped Martial Arts Championship and meet up with his friend Sato Migusion, the international renowned director of such cult film classics as Sex Up the Hotrod, Baby! But Sato never shows. Instead, the girl of Billy's dreams stumbles into a dive bar with tatooed Yakuza mobsters in hot pursuit. Then Billy will start brawls in swanky corporate sex clubs, be offered a golf club membership by a secret religious order, meet a dog trained in the ways of the Samurai, and race stolen motorcycles through the neon-choked streets of Tokyo. Packed with enough over-the-top fists action to make Jackie Chan cry, and featuring the most lovable uncool hero since Austin Powers, this hilarious send-up is a pop culture potpourri of sub-epic proportion.
Book
Hokkaido Popsicle
by Isaac Adamson
After an altercation with the director of Wildman for Geisha! -- a movie based on ace reporter Billy Chaka's life -- Chaka finds himself in Hokkaido on mandatory vacation. Trouble starts when the elderly porter of the Hotel Kitty stumbles into Billy's room and dies. That same night, the lead singer of Japan's most popular rock band turns up dead in a sleazy love hotel in Tokyo. Billy Chaka goes to Tokyo to cover the story for Youth in Asia magazine and soon finds out there's more to the rocker's apparent drug overdose than meets the eye. A Beatles-obsessed record executive, a mute DJ, two giant kickboxing twins with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music, a Swedish stripper working at the Purloined Kitten Club -- each play a part in the hard-boiled hilarity that ensues as Billy Chaka discovers that the rock star and the elderly hotel porter just might share a very strange link.
Book
Dreaming Pachinko
by Isaac Adamson
Tokyo, July 2001: Hard-boiled reporter Billy Chaka is back in the neon metropolis interviewing a has-been pop singer turned pachinko fanatic for Youth in Asia magazine. Looks like an easy assignment until he witnesses a beautiful young woman suffer a seizure in the Lucky Benten pachinko hall. When she is later found dead beneath the expressway, Chaka becomes embroiled in an apparent blackmail plot involving a Ministry of Construction official, a brash nineteen-year-old girl, a shadowy entity known only as "Mr. Bojangles," and four silent figures who have a penchant for showing up uninvited inside Chaka's hotel room. As the bodies pile up and the mystery deepens, Chaka must untangle the lies, obsessions, and seemingly supernatural events that link the dead woman to a forgotten, bloody incident from the desperate closing days of World War II. Spellbinding and hilarious, Dreaming Pachinko will take you on a surreal thrill- ride through the city of the future -- a place where no one can escape the past.
Book
Kinki Lullaby
by Isaac Adamson
Wisecracking reporter and reluctant detective Billy Chaka is back. His latest misadventure finds him in Osaka to accept an award for an article he'd written years before about a teenage Bunraku puppet prodigy named Tetsuo. Billy quickly learns he may have been summoned for more than the award -- Tetsuo has been expelled from Osaka's most prestigious theater company following a bloody, unexplained incident involving a fellow puppeteer. While Billy tries to unravel that mystery, an American man in the hotel room next door is found brutally murdered. Investigating the homicide and its bizarre link to the young puppeteer plunges Billy into a shadowy world where dreams and reality violently intermingle and people are never who they seem. It's a world not far removed from that of the Bunraku theater that flourished in Osaka hundreds of years ago, stylishly recast for the neon-lit urban stage with decrepit gangsters, clueless expatriates, dangerous women, and one seriously deranged hotel employee. Two parts noir and one part playful irreverence, Kinki Lullaby is a sly whodunit that unfolds with the twisted charm of a fever dream.
Book
69
by 村上龍
In 1969, they were seventeen. They read Rimbaud, played guitars, smoked pot, fell in love, rebelled against the establishment, protested the war in Vietnam, barricaded high school, and produced the first rock festival in their home town. This title presents the coming of age during a time that left its mark on baby boomers around the world. In 1969 we were seventeen. We listened to the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, the Grateful Dead, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan. We read Rimbaud, played guitars, smoked pot, fell in love, rebelled against the
Book
Battle Royale
by KĹŤshun Takami
This classic yet controversial Japanese novel is available for the first time in English--a high-octane thriller about senseless youth violence that is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today's dog-eat-dog world.
Book
Bangkok 8
by John Burdett
A thriller with attitude to spare, Bangkok 8 is a sexy, razor-edged, often darkly hilarious novel set in one of the world’s most exotic cities. Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.
Book
To Live
by Yu Hua
Originally banned in China but later named one of that nation’s most influential books, a searing novel that portrays one man’s transformation from the spoiled son of a landlord to a kindhearted peasant. “A work of astounding emotional power.” —Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zhang Yimou. After squandering his family’s fortune in gambling dens and brothels, the young, deeply penitent Fugui settles down to do the honest work of a farmer. Forced by the Nationalist Army to leave behind his family, he witnesses the horrors and privations of the Civil War, only to return years later to face a string of hardships brought on by the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. Left with an ox as the companion of his final years, Fugui stands as a model of gritty authenticity, buoyed by his appreciation for life in this narrative of humbling power.
Book
A Year in Japan
by Kate T. Williamson
New York City-based writer and illustrator Williamson shares discoveries about Japan and its culture based on a recent year spent in Kyoto as a postgraduate student. The text combines the author's colorful illustrations with brief descriptions presented in a script-style text. The end result is a charming, journal-like publication in which Williams
Book
Takarazuka
by Jennifer Robertson
The all-female Takarazuka Revue is world-famous today for its rococo musical productions, including gender-bending love stories, This text explores how the Revue illuminates discourses of sexual politics, nationalism, imperialism and popular culture in 20th-century Japan.