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5 books

Flowers in the Blood

A Jewish family’s fortunes in the opium trade connect Victorian Calcutta with China and the ambitions of Anglo-Indian commercial society.

Literary fiction

Love in a Fallen City

Eileen Chang

In the title novella, a divorced woman and an elusive suitor circle one another in colonial Hong Kong, where romance is inseparable from money, status and the need for security.

Short stories

Messer Marco Polo

Donn Byrne

Byrne's imagined Marco Polo journeys from Venice towards China, giving historical travel the enchantment and distance of a storyteller's romance.

Historical fiction

Screen adaptation

Red Sorghum

Mo Yan

Family legend, resistance and violence unfold in rural Shandong during the Japanese invasion of China.

Historical fiction

Shadow of the Silk Road

Colin Thubron

Following the old Silk Road westward from China, Colin Thubron moves through landscapes connected by centuries of trade, belief and displacement.

Travel writing

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