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The Missing Pages
Sixty years after the Cultural Revolution began, a writer looks back to her childhood in Beijing during its peak, and the banned books that sustained...
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W. Somerset Maugham: On a Chinese Screen
Over a century after it came out, Maugham's travelogue of his trip to China in 1919–20 reveals less about China itself, more about the foreigners...
China’s Disappearing Countryside, with Colin Flahive
Over the last quarter century, the countryside of southwest China has been transformed. The author of two memoirs reflects on what is lost, and what...
Hong Kong’s Past, Present and Future
Six years after Hong Kong's National Security Law went into effect, we convened a panel of authors to discuss what has changed since.
Can China Actually Go Green?
China’s environmental strides came out of the clash between grassroots activists and the state, argues a new book by a Chinese journalist. But now that...
Stranger Than Life
We recommend five Chinese-language books that draw on real-life experiences, from an LGBTQ short story collection to a reality-TV inspired novel.
The Perfect Dictatorship?
A new book argues that “smart authoritarianism” enabled China's economic growth while keeping draconian control over its society. But is it really possible for the...
Awards Ceremony for the 2026 Winners
Journalist Barbara Demick and translator Michael Berry talk about their winning books "Daughters of the Bamboo Grove" and "The Running Flame," at our prize ceremony.
China and the Mediterranean
The Middle Kingdom and the Middle Sea have had contact for millennia. Two books explore how China has viewed the Mediterranean, and the state of...
Frank Dikötter on the Rise of the Party
The historian talks about the early days of the Chinese Communist Party, and how they prevailed in 1949, in a China Books Review book talk...
Tiananmen in Fiction
After 37 years, the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown of 1989 have been preserved in novels as much as in memory. But does the Anglophone...
Murder in Hong Kong with Simon Elegant
The Hong Kong-born novelist and journalist talks us through his new novel "City on Fire," a whodunnit thriller set against the 2019 protests.
