Books like 'Pearl of China'
Readers who enjoyed Pearl of China by Anchee Min also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Emerald Horizon by Jean Grainger
Rated: 4.54 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBerlin, 1944. Ariella Bannon is being hunted. Someone is determined to betray her as a Jew, but she has survived against incredible odds, and the end is in sight. She will be reunited with her precious children, no matter what it takes.Meanwhile, Liesl and Erich have found a home in Ireland, away from the chaos of war-ravaged Europe... -
Return to Robinswood by Jean Grainger
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsOne Irish house, two very different families, and a war that changed everything. Robinswood Estate, County Waterford, Ireland. 1946.Years of neglect and abandonment have left the family seat of the Keneficks almost derelict, but the new Lord Kenefick and his charming young wife Kate, are determined to breathe life into the old house once more... -
They Burn Thistles by Yaşar Kemal
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis is the story of a bitter war between the poor Turkish peasants of the Taurus Mountains and the Aghas who covet their land. Ali Safa is determined to take possession of the village of Vayvay but its inhabitants will not sell. Then one villager weakens, prepared to part with his land in return for the Agha's best stallion...Categorized as:
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The Cypress Maze by Fiona Valpy
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn this haunting tale from the bestselling author of The Storyteller of Casablanca, Beatrice kept a wartime secret to protect the innocent. Now, could telling it set her free?Tuscany, 1943. Stranded in war-ravaged Italy, Beatrice’s dream of an escapist year teaching English is shattered...Categorized as:
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Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAn aspiring photographer follows her dreams and faces her fears in a poignant novel about finding beauty, promise, and love amid the chaos of war-torn Kurdistan.It’s 1979. Olivia Murray, a secretary at a Los Angeles newspaper, is determined to become a photojournalist and make a difference with her work...Categorized as:
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The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsHaunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million people... -
Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA haunting tale of power, corruption, and the complex search for identity, Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel Apolinario Odría Amoretti...Categorized as:
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Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs the world moves into the twentieth century, Minke, one of the few European-educated Javanese, optimistically starts a new life in a new town: Betawi. With his enrollment in medical school and the opportunity to meet new people, there is every reason to believe that he can leave behind the tragedies of the past...Categorized as:
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The Last Restaurant in Paris by Lily Graham
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsParis 1944. To save her people, she served the enemy.In enemy-occupied Paris, as the locals go to bed starving and defeated by the war, music and laughter spills through the door of a little restaurant, crowded with German soldiers. The owner Marianne moves on weary feet between its packed tables, carrying plates of steaming, wholesome food for the enemy officers...Categorized as:
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Madeline and the Bad Hat by Ludwig Bemelmans
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe Spanish Ambassador has moved next door, and Madeline knows right away that his son, Pepito, is bad news...Categorized as:
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The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in the vast windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples...Categorized as:
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Christ Recrucified by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe inhabitants of a Greek village, ruled by the Turks, plan to enact the life of Christ in a mystery play but are overwhelmed by their task. A group of refugees, fleeing from the ruins of their plundered homes, arrive asking for protection - and suddenly the drama of the Passion becomes reality...Categorized as:
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Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe sensual and provocative second volume in the Cairo Trilogy, Palace Of Desire follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities...Categorized as:
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An Invincible Memory by João Ubaldo Ribeiro
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA family saga spanning nearly 400 years, this absorbing epic novel lays bare the soul of the Brazilian nation. Whaling, war, macumba, slavery, murder, cannibalism and Brazil's struggle for independence add momentum to Ribeiro's lyrical, effusive, sonorous, serpentine prose laced with a touch of magic realism, something of a cross between Melville and Gabriel Garcia Marquez... -
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The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNotice: "In the First Circle" and "The First Circle": "In The First Circle" is 200pp longer; "The first circle" is a censored and abridged version.Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949, 'The First Circle' is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant mathematician...Categorized as:
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Love Poems by Pablo Neruda
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCharged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda's love poems are the most celebrated of the Nobel Prize winner's oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images and reveling in a fiery re-imagining of the world...Categorized as:
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The Kites by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a small farm in Normandy, as Hitler rises to power in Germany, young Ludo comes of age in the care of his Uncle Ambrose, an eccentric mailman, kite-maker, and pacifist. Ludo’s quiet existence changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family who own the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo instantly falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, remains elusive...Categorized as:
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Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFinalist 2019 Canadian Book Club AwardsShortlisted for the 2017 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction2017 IPPY Silver Medal WinnerSet in 1906 along the unspoiled shores of Lake Manitoba, Be Still the Water brings us into the fold of the Gudmundsson Family—immigrants determined to begin life anew in the Icelandic farming and fishing community of Siglunes...Categorized as:
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To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis classic schoolroom drama of a black teacher in London's tough East End who triumphs over bigotry and ignorance to change the lives of his students forever was hailed by the "New York Times" as "a book that the reader devours quickly, ponders slowly, and forgets not at all"With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot...Categorized as:
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The Lieutenant's Girl by Shari J. Ryan
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPearl Harbor, 1941. War planes hurtle across the horizon, skimming the clouds. Gunpowder fills the air as the earth shatters. Everett’s hands cup my cheeks. “If I lose you, Elizabeth, please know that the time I’ve spent with you has been worth every second I’ve been alive...Categorized as:
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The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway, John Hemingway
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsTHE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection...Categorized as:
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They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPainting an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this story is told through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy...Categorized as:
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Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andrić, Joseph Hitrec
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleanic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtley, Tolstoyan. In its portray of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant...Categorized as:
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The Third Wedding by Costas Taktsis, Κώστας Ταχτσής
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe German Occupation, the Civil War and life itself seen through the eyes of two Athenian women...Categorized as:
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The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Young Lions is a vivid and classic novel that portrays the experiences of ordinary soldiers fighting World War II. Told from the points of view of a perceptive young Nazi, a jaded American film producer, and a shy Jewish boy just married to the love of his life, Shaw conveys, as no other novelist has since, the scope, confusion, and complexity of war...Categorized as:
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The Inhabited Woman by Gioconda Belli, Margaret Randall
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLavinia is The Inhabited Woman: accomplished, independent, and fiercely modern. She is sheltered and self-involved, until the spirit of an Indian woman warrior enters her being, then she dares to join a revolutionary movement against a violent dictator and—through the power of love—finds the courage to act...Categorized as:
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Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing poet Forugh Farrokhzhad, who defied Iranian society to find her voice and her destiny “Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.”—Forugh Farrokhzad All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh is told that Iranian daughters should be quiet and modest... -
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Diviners is the culmination and completion of Margaret Laurence's Manawaka cycle.This is the powerful story of an independent woman who refuses to abandon her search for love. For Morag Gunn, growing up in a small Canadian prairie town is a toughening process – putting distance between herself and a world that wanted no part of her...Categorized as:
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My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA teenage boy makes the mistake of falling in love with the much-protected daughter of his uncle, mischievously nicknamed after his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, the curmudgeonly self-appointed patriarch of a large and extended Iranian family in 1940s Tehran...Categorized as:
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The Next Ship Home by Heather Webb
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsEllis Island, 1902: Two women band together to hold America to its promise: "Give me your tired, your poor..."Ellis Island, 1902. Francesca arrives on the shores of America, her sights set on a better life than the one she left in Italy. That same day, aspiring linguist Alma reports to her first day of work at the immigrant processing center...Categorized as:
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Rapsodie der eenzaamheid by Agnar Mykle, Maurice Michael
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDutch translation of Lasso rundt fru Luna... -
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 35 ratings#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In her most powerful novel yet, acclaimed author Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z. G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love...Categorized as:
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An Instant in the Wind by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas's final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master's vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother's funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death...Categorized as:
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The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe absorbing first novel by one of Israel's most important and acclaimed contemporary writers focuses on four idealistic early settlers of the modern state of Israel...Categorized as:
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Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne bright spring day in 1925, Gabriela arrives from the poverty-stricken backwoods of Brazil to the lively seaside port of Ilhéus amid a flock of filthy migrant workers. Though wearing rags and covered in dirt, she attracts the attention of Nacib, a cafe owner, who is in desperate need of a new cook. So dire is his situation that he hires the disheveled girl...Categorized as:
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The White Ship by Chingiz Aitmatov
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDeserted by his parents, a young boy finds himself alone in the often grotesque world or relatives who do not want to raise him. As daily events become more and more intolerable, the boy clings to the legends and religious traditions of the area for relief...Categorized as:
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The Bracelet of Garnets and Other Stories by Aleksandr Kuprin, Leo Pasvolsky
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages... -
The Italian Villa by Daniela Sacerdoti
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCallie, a lonely small-town waitress, is still reeling from the discovery that she’s adopted when she arrives in Montevino, Italy in search of answers – the keys to the stunning hillside villa she has just inherited clutched tightly in her hand... -
Krik? Krak!: Récits by Edwidge Danticat
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsWhen Haitians tell a story, they say "Krik?" and the eager listeners answer "Krak!" In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life...Categorized as:
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The End of the Hunt by Thomas Flanagan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSet in Ireland at the time of the Troubles, during the watershed year of 1919, Thomas Flanagan's epic The End of the Hunt chronicles the years following World War I, in which the British attempted to put down once and for all the centuries-old dream of an independent Ireland... -
Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal T. Spitz
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFinally in English, Island of Shattered Dreams is the first ever novel by an indigenous Tahitian writer. In a lyrical and immensely moving style, this book combines a family saga and a doomed love story, set against the background of French Polynesia in the period leading up to the first nuclear tests...Categorized as:
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A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
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The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis is an intoxicating tale of love and wonder, mothers and daughters, spiritual values and the grim legacy of slavery on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Here long-suffering Telumee tells her life story and tells us about the proud line of Lougandor women she continues to draw strength from...Categorized as:
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The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone - and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley. He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back...Categorized as:
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Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis astonishingly proficient and gripping first novel should be required reading for anyone who calls him or herself a responsible citizen. Not only is it masterfully written, with images as sharp as shards of broken glass, but it also carries a message so potent it burns into the conscience...Categorized as:
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The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEngland in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter... -
Rain and Other South Sea Stories by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsW. Somerset Maugham led many lives, including that of a doctor in London's slums, a successful playwright and novelist, an agent for British Intelligence during World War I, and a world traveler. In 1917, he took the first of many voyages to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, where his keen sense of observation found inspiration for some of his finest writing... -
Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsImperial Woman is the fictionalized biography of the last Empress in China, Ci-xi, who began as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor and on his death became the de facto head of the Qing Dynasty until her death in 1908.Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rulers during a time of intense turbulence.Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty...Categorized as:
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When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsEmily thinks she’s lost everything…until a mysterious painting leads her to what she wants most in the world. The new novel from the author of international bestsellers The Sweetness of Forgetting and The Life Intended shows why her books are hailed as “engaging” ( People ), “absorbing” ( Kirkus Reviews ) and “enthralling” (Fresh Fiction)...Categorized as:
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The Language of Threads by Gail Tsukiyama
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsReaders of Women of the Silk never forgot the moving, powerful story of Pei, brought to work in the silk house as a girl, grown into a quiet but determined young woman whose life is subject to cruel twists of fate, including the loss of her closest friend, Lin...Categorized as:
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