Fiction books about China

Alice Poon

A novel of Empress Xiaozhuang, the woman who re-made Asia

With the fate of East Asia hanging in the balance, one Mongolian woman manipulates her lovers, sons and grandsons through war and upheaval to create an empire that lasted for 250 years.

The Green Phoenix tells the story of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, born a Mongolian princess who became a consort in the Manchu court and then the Qing Dynasty’s first matriarch. She lived through harrowing threats, endless political crises, personal heartaches and painful losses to lead a shaky Empire out of dead end. The story is set against a turbulent canvas as the Chinese Ming Dynasty is replaced by the Qing. Xiaozhuang guides her husband, her lover, her son and her grandson – all emperors and supreme leaders of the Qing Empire – to success against the odds.

Kindle version, click here.

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A novel of Lao Tzu. By Wayne Ng

A novel of Lao Tzu. In the sixth century BC, the legendary philosopher Lao Tzu seeks redemption and an opportunity to spread his beliefs by joining the royal court, but is greeted by a vainglorious King, a mad Queen and a deadly struggle for power in progress between the twin princes. In one of them, the thoughtful but hesitant heir to the throne Prince Meng, he discovers a protégé. But Lao Tzu’s ideas of peace and natural order leave him ill-prepared for the intrigue of the palace and the noxious rivalry between Meng and his younger twin brother, the bold and decisive Prince Chao. Confucius arrives and allies with Chao, thus raising the stakes for control of the dynasty culminating in a venomous clash between Taoism and Confucianism. With the King ailing and war imminent, Lao Tzu is betrayed and accused of spying. The Master Philosopher must cast aside his naivete and idealism to fight for his life.

Wayne Ng’s Finding the Way vividly reimagines the life and times of China’s most mysterious philosopher, Lao Tzu. On the utmost fringes of the empire, somewhere between history and myth, Lao Tzu relates the story of his life. Finding the Way is a must for fans of Chinese history and philosophy, and for lovers of a tale well-told.—Will Buckingham, author of The Descent of the Lyre

In this action-packed yet thoughtful thriller, narrated by a fictional Lao Tzu, Ng’s deep sense of history and his profound understanding of ancient thought produces a riveting story. We witness the best of Taoist and Confucianist intentions and ideals. Yet they are doomed in the short term to fail when confronted by the raw reality of ambition and power. Nevertheless they remain the bedrock of Chinese civilization.—Adam Williams, author of The Dragon’s Tail

ISBN:
978-988-8422-78-4
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A Cycle of Stories from the I Ching – The Book of Changes

The Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, is one of the oldest and strangest of all books, a masterpiece of world literature, a divination manual and a magnet for the deranged and the obsessive. In Sixty-Four Chance Pieces, novelist and philosopher Will Buckingham puts the I Ching to work, using it to weave together sixty-four stories of chance and change, each flowing from one of the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams. Moving between myth, fable and travel-writing, Sixty-Four Chance Pieces offers an attempt to make sense of the maddening, changeable book that is the I Ching with tales of inventors and fox-spirits, ancient poets and non-existent rulers, kleptomaniac pensioners and infernal bureaucrats. Like the I Ching itself, this new Book of Changes is a puzzle, a conundrum and a journey of many transformations, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Press Release

Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang review June 2015

Asia Review of Books review July 2015

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A novel by Nick Macfie

An English girl with a Chinese father gets caught up in the illegal gambling business. A benevolent gangster kills a dodgy dealer with a bow and arrow. It’s Christmas in Hong Kong and journalist Hadley Arnold, king of the cynical hacks, is in trouble again.

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Christopher New

Hong Kong’s demi-monde at the height of the British Empire… Franziska Goldmann, an opera singer fallen on hard times, has become the star courtesan in 19th century Hong Kong. A chance encounter with Queen Victoria’s musical second son seems to offer Franziska an opportunity to resume her career as a singer. But it is the other unpredictable characters in her life, including her German anarchist lover and a devious procurer, who may ultimately determine her destiny. The haunting story of a lone woman’s struggle to escape her fate, Gage Street Courtesan unfolds against the ironically observed background of colonial society, from the waterfront brothels to the mansions of the rich.

“The magic of this book lies in the many accounts given by many characters; what they are doing and thinking are revealed in parallel in a fashion similar to that of a split-frame in a film. In this way, they reveal their shady pasts, their present schemes and desires and their wishful hopes, a little at a time… Here is a big round of applause for the beautiful balance of sound historical research and the frightfully vivid imagination which make up this fictional Hong Kong, once upon a time.”

Review from Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (March 2014)

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