Essay

Don’t Write Off the Mao Dun Literature Prize

Never mind the Booker, Pulitzer and National Book Award — China’s Mao Dun Prize, despite its behind-the-times reputation, can shift the reading habits of a billion people.

Fox Butterfield on China in the 1970s

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author tells us about his first trip to China, and opening the Beijing bureau of "The New York Times" in 1979.

Translated Chinese Literature: Story and History

Five recent Chinese books in translation apply different prisms — pictures, poetry, fiction, memoir — to draw narratives out of complicated personal and political histories.

Book Launch: Kevin Rudd on What Xi Jinping Thinks

At an Asia Society event, Dr. Kevin Rudd discussed his new book on Xi Jinping’s ideological worldview, and its implications for China’s political direction.

Is Xi Jinping a Marxist?

“Xi Jinping Thought” — articulated in texts by China’s leader and dissected in two new books — has the power to reshape China for decades to come. So what exactly does Xi Jinping think?

Move Fast and Break Things

Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour of 1992 has been heralded as the unofficial act that kick-started China’s economic miracle. But other voices were also calling for reform, even as Deng’s enemies in the Party resisted it. A new book separates myth from reality.

Ep. 13: Peter Hessler on 'Other Rivers'

The bestselling author first taught in China in the late 1990s. In 2019, he went back. We caught up with him to ask what had changed, and if you can step into the same river twice.

Upcoming books

The Choice

Zhang Ping (tr. James Trapp)

October 31, 2024

Sinoist

Nothing but the Now

Wen Zhen (tr. Dave Haysom)

October 31, 2024

Bridge 21

The Politics of Medicine in China

David M. Lampton

October 31, 2024

Routledge

Secret Stories on the Silk Road

Alessandro Coscia, Sergio Coppola

October 31, 2024

Mimesis International

Confronting China

Eds. James H. Anderson, Daniel R. Green

October 31, 2024

Bloomsbury Academic

Browse more upcoming
Recent books

The Everything Hong Kong Cookbook

Chality Wright

October 29, 2024

Hutong Heartthrobs

Tammy Treichel

October 29, 2024

Earnshaw Books

Masquerade

Mike Fu

October 29, 2024

Tin House

The Origin and Evolution of China’s Names I

Hu A-Xiang

October 29, 2024

Routledge

The Origin and Evolution of China’s Names II

Hu A-Xiang

October 29, 2024

Routledge

Browse more recent
Bestselling books

Plan Red

Gordon G. Chang

October 1, 2024

Humanix Books

Chinese Enough

Kristina Cho

September 24, 2024

Artisan

Blood Money

Peter Schweizer

February 27, 2024

Harper

New Cold Wars

David E. Sanger

April 16, 2024

Penguin Random House

Daughters of Shandong

Eve J. Chung

May 7, 2024

Berkley

Browse more bestselling
Editors' picks

At the Edge of Empire

Edward Wong

June 25, 2024

Viking

Private Revolutions

Yuan Yang

July 2, 2024

Viking

Other Rivers

Peter Hessler

July 9, 2024

Penguin Press

Sound and Silence

Yan Lianke

April 23, 2024

Duke University Press

Growing Up under a Red Flag

Ying Chang Compestine

May 7, 2024

Rocky Pond Books

Browse more picks

From the Archive

Jane Perlez’s China Bookshelf

The veteran journalist walks us through five titles from her shelf, from past China correspondents to new novels — and an anti-imperialist board game from the Cultural Revolution.

How a Chinese Student Turned Marxist

Intellectual young Chinese — once the socialist vanguard, now struggling to get by in a capitalist economy — are turning left once more. But when an ostensibly Marxist nation cracks down on labor activism, where is an idealist left to turn?

What China’s Reading: Travelers’ Dispatches

Five recent travel books published in China explore the world beyond, from Peru to Japan. We consider how Chinese travelogues show unique perspectives.

Philip Kuhn: Sorcery and Bureaucracy in Qing China

A supernatural crisis pits an anxious autocrat against his own functionaries, when a hunt for soul-stealing sorcerers turns into a political witch-hunt among 18th-century China’s “deep state.”

Ep. 12: China’s Evolving Art Scene

Contemporary art from China took off in the 1990s, and became a hot commodity in the 2000s. The China Books podcast asks an expert how the scene changed since then, and where it is today.

Where the River Reaches Home

Three recent books narrate family histories that flow over time and space. But when identities evolve across borders, language holds the memory that carries us back to where we came from.

New Photography Books on China

Five recent photography collections, from a frontline view of wartime China to a bucolic portrait of a Hong Kong village, show how images can speak volumes.

Contemporary Chinese Art Photography

A collection of three decades worth of Chinese art photography shows a country in social and cultural foment, questioning the status quo and pushing aesthetic boundaries.

Ep. 11: Beijing in Short Fiction

China’s capital is so difficult to capture that sometimes only fiction can suffice. The editor of a new short story collection explains how a literary kaleidoscope can be the best lens to view Beijing.

The Erasure of the Uyghurs

Oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang has slipped from headlines — but two recent memoirs by Uyghurs abroa attempt to portray the minority as more than just victims.

Summer China Reads

Five new China books for your summer reading list, from an intergenerational family memoir to a children's picture book of the Cultural Revolution.

Book Talk: Edward Wong on the Edge of Empire

The New York Times journalist tells us how his father followed Mao's star in the 1950s — and how the frontiers he reported on in the 2000s were a world apart.

From the Archive

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