Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Books Set in Asia

Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.
(Description from NoveList)

Documents the intimate stories of two refugees in present-day Texas, describing how a Christian from Myanmar and a Muslim from Syria narrowly escaped their home countries only to be introduced to the worst and best of the American dream. (Description from NoveList.)

An award-winning journalist investigates the mysterious 2014 deaths of two teenage girls in a tiny Indian village and how it led to a national conversation about sex, violence and codes of honor. (Description from NoveList)

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday October 9, 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price. (Description from catalog)

Analyzes the perilous world of the international fossil trade through the story of one man's devastating effort to sell a Gobi Desert dinosaur skeleton from a nation that forbids natural-history trafficking.
(Description from NoveList)

After two and a half years of ISIS occupation, and months of fighting between the militants and government forces, the Mosul Zoo was one of the few outdoor attractions still standing in Iraq's second city, its inhabitants kept alive by Abu Laith, a square-set 50-something mechanic and passionate animal lover. As the animals began to starve under the siege by advancing Iraqi army forces, Abu Laith, the "Father of Lions" and his protegees and family risked their lives to keep the animals alive. (Description from NoveList.)

The author describes his spring 1996 trek to Mt. Everest, a disastrous expedition that claimed the lives of eight climbers, and explains why he survived. (Description from NoveList)

Follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population, illustrating what it means to live under the most repressive totalitarian regime today. (Description from NoveList)

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo-the city that would become Tokyo-and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. (Description from catalog.)

MBS is the untold story of how a mysterious young prince emerged from Saudi Arabia's sprawling royal family to overhaul the economy and society of the richest country in the Middle East--and gather as much power as possible into his own hands. (Description form catalog.)

The bestselling author of The Secretary tells the gripping story of the real roots of the Sunni-Shia conflict in Middle East in the 1979 Iran Revolution that changed the region forever. (Description from catalog.)

For years, renowned activist and scholar Ilana Hammerman has given the world remarkable translations of Kafka. With A Small Door Set in Concrete, she turns to the actual surreal existence that is life in the West Bank after decades of occupation. (Description from NoveList)

This astonishing book by the prize-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid tells the tragedy of the Syrian War through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country. Extending back to the first demonstrations of 2011, No Turning Back dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict. (Description from catalog)

Shimon Peres' final work, finished shortly before his death. An autobiography and study of the crucial moments in Israel's history. (Description from catalog)

A human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee traces the harrowing and ultimately inspiring story of her captivity by the Islamic State, describing how militants massacred the people of her Iraqi farming village, killing most of her family members and forcing her into prostitution before she escaped and became an advocate for human rights. (Description from NoveList)

In The Home that Was My Country, Syrian-American journalist Alia Malek chronicles her return to her family home in Damascus and the history of the Jabban apartment building. In telling the story of her family over the course of the last century, Alia brings to light the triumphs and failures that have led Syria to where it is today. (Description from catalog)

An account of more than a century of violent confrontation, war and occupation in Palestine and Israel, published on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, draws on a wide range of sources to offer new insights into major events and present-day challenges. (Description from NoveList)

Shehadeh explores how occupation has affected him personally, chronicling the various crossings that he undertook into Israel over a period of forty years to visit friends and family, to argue before the Israeli courts, and to negotiate failed peace agreements; and provides an anatomy of his friendship with Henry, a Canadian Jew who immigrated to Israel, and an exploration of whether it is possible for bonds to transcend political divisions. (Description from NoveList)

In this raw, searing new narrative account, Howard Jones reopens the case of My Lai by examining individual accounts of both victims and soldiers through extensive archival and original research. Jones evokes the horror of the event itself, the attempt to suppress it, as well as the response to Calley's sentence and the seemingly unanswerable question of whether he had merely been following orders. (Description from catalog)

A breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years-from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives-the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness-are inextricable from the history playing out around them. (Description from NoveList)

In this retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry--until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor in the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won't make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and start having children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire them to dream of more.
(Description from catalog)

A novel set in 1953 Tehran, against the backdrop of the Iranian Coup, about a young couple in love who are separated on the eve of their marriage, and who are reunited sixty years later, after having moved on to live independent lives in America, to discover the truth about what happened on that fateful day in the town square . (Description from NoveList.)

Deciding to go vegetarian in the wake of violent thoughts, Yeong-hye, a woman from an Asian culture of strict societal mores, is denounced as a subversive as she spirals into extreme rebelliousness that causes her to splinter from her true nature and risk her life. (Description from NoveList)

Introduces Bombay's first female lawyer, Oxford graduate Perveen Mistry, as she investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in strict purdah seclusion who become subject to a murderous guardian's schemes for their inheritances. (Description from NoveList.)

Tr̀ân Dịêu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Ṇôi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ĥò Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart. (Description from catalog.)

Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.
(Description from catalog)

On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party, but the occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. (Description from Amazon.)

A first novel by the award-winning author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds is written in the form of a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read about the impact of the Vietnam War on their family. (Description from NoveList.)