Fiction Archives | China Books Review

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.

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.

Human Literature

In the age of artificial intelligence, with publishers turning to AI translation tools, it is more meaningful than ever to read human translations of literature....

Writing from the Margins

From Tibet to Taiwan, Yunnan to yonder, we recommend five Spring Festival reads with a focus on the periphery.

King Lear And China’s Big Leader Kultur

Shakespeare has much to teach us about the hubristic fragility of despotic leaders, from the tyrants of the mid-20th century to those of today. But...

Chinese Horror with Xueting C. Ni

Horror writing has an unsavory reputation in China, but comes with a long history and is full of biting social commentary. The translator of a...

New Fiction from China

2025 has seen a bumper crop for Chinese literature in translation. We recommend five recent titles, from gritty tales of the northeast to conjoined fiction...

Yu Hua: Fictional Cities

The bestselling Chinese novelist foregrounds individual suffering in the chaos of modern Chinese history. In his latest novel in translation, gratuitous violence shows the limits...

No Country for Women

Women in China have suffered abuse, silencing and erasure — despite Communist Party slogans about women's liberation. Two novels by the Chinese writer Fang Fang...