Books like 'Red Dust: A Path Through China'
Readers who enjoyed Red Dust: A Path Through China by Ma Jian also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical action / adventure politics journey
-
Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian
Rated: 4.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPatrick O'Brian's masterpiece, the Aubrey-Maturin series, follows the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Dr. Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. The series consists of 20 complete and one unfinished novel, the first published in 1970 and the last finished novel in 1999... -
![Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasrallah]()
Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasrallah
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSpanning the collapse of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate in Palestine, this is the story of three generations of a defiant family from the Palestinian village of Hadiya before 1948. Through the lives of Mahmud, chief elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled’s grandson Naji, we enter the life of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another... -
![The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War by Ammar Habib]()
The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War by Ammar Habib
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratings#1 Bestseller in Asian-American Literature!Available in paperback, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited!Winner of the 2019 Independent Press Award From the ashes of the Syrian Civil War comes this story of hope, love, and courage... After standing for over 7,000 years, Aleppo's ruin came overnight... -
![The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz]()
The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 36 ratings"The Harafish begins with the tale of Ashur al-Nagi, a man who grows from humble beginnings to become a great leader, a legend among his people. Generation after generation, however, Ashur's descendants grow further from his legendary example... -
-
![Alamut by Vladimir Bartol]()
Alamut by Vladimir Bartol
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAlamut takes place in 11th Century Persia, in the fortress of Alamut, where self-proclaimed prophet Hasan ibn Sabbah is setting up his mad but brilliant plan to rule the region with a handful elite fighters who are to become his "living daggers... -
![Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
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:
journey politics 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history book classics -
![The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee]()
The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA bestselling novel in Iran, despite being banned twice by the government, The Book of Fate follows a teenage girl in pre-revolutionary Iran through five turbulent decades, from before the 1979 revolution, through the Islamic Republic, and up to the present in this powerful story of friendship, passion, and hope... -
![The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel]()
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis stirring, poignant novel, based on real historical events that made of actual people true heroes, unfolds the tragedy that befell the Armenian people in the dark year of 1915. The Great War is raging through Europe, and in the ancient, mountainous lands southwest of the Caspian Sea the Turks have begun systematically to exterminate their Christian subjects... -
![Samarkand by Amin Maalouf]()
Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAccused of mocking the inviolate codes of Islam, the Persian poet and sage Omar Khayyam fortuitously finds sympathy with the very man who is to judge his alleged crimes. Recognising genuis, the judge decides to spare him and gives him instead a small, blank book, encouraging him to confine his thoughts to it alone. Thus begins the seamless blend of fact and fiction that is Samarkand... -
![The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei]()
The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA propulsive crime drama featuring a legendary Hong Kong detective on a decades-long quest to expose the city’s dark underbelly... -
![The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly]()
The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBeautifully written and taking us into an exotic land, Karen Connelly’s debut novel The Lizard Cage is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.Teza once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement... -
![The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]()
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... -
![Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani]()
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the The Deceived. Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse.. -
![The Reluctant Wife by Caroline Warfield]()
The Reluctant Wife by Caroline Warfield
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen all else fails, love succeeds…Captain Fred Wheatly’s comfortable life on the fringes of Bengal comes crashing down around him when his mistress dies, leaving him with two children he never expected to have to raise. After he chooses justice over army regulations, he’s forced to resign his position, leaving him no way to support his unexpected family... -
-
![They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Leigh Fermor]()
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... -
![Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andrić, Joseph Hitrec]()
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... -
![Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Tina A. Kover]()
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Tina A. Kover
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsKimia Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself, as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimia is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves... -
![The Last Checkmate by Gabriella Saab]()
The Last Checkmate by Gabriella Saab
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsReaders of Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz and watchers of The Queen’s Gambit won’t want to miss this amazing debut set during World War II. A young Polish resistance worker, imprisoned in Auschwitz as a political prisoner, plays chess in exchange for her life, and in doing so fights to bring the man who destroyed her family to justice... -
![Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik]()
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... -
![My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi]()
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... -
![Mama Hissa's Mice by Saud Alsanousi]()
Mama Hissa's Mice by Saud Alsanousi
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the author of The Bamboo Stalk and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world... -
![Where Love Dwells by Delia Parr]()
Where Love Dwells by Delia Parr
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsEmma Garret is eagerly anticipating the arrival of spring, when her three children and grandchildren will travel back to Candlewood to celebrate her birthday at Hill House, the boardinghouse she oversees. Though anxious to introduce her sons to Zachary Breckenwith, the man who's been courting her, her sons' own problems--and wounds deeply hidden since childhood--soon overshadow her joy... -
![And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson]()
And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnd the Land Lay Still is the sweeping Scottish epic by James RobertsonAnd the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change... -
![Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović]()
Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMiljenko Jergovic’s remarkable début collection of stories, Sarajevo Marlboro – winner of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize – earned him wide acclaim throughout Europe. Croatian by birth, Jergovic ? spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war...Categorized as:
journey politics 20th-century action-adventure anthologies children-books classics fiction -
-
![Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado]()
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... -
![Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti]()
Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the tradition of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, a celebrated classic and heart-wrenching story of a family torn apart by the forces of history, by one of Latin America’s most celebrated writersSpringtime in a Broken Mirror revolves around Santiago, a political prisoner in Uruguay, who was jailed after a brutal military coup that saw many of his comrades flee elsewhere... -
![Em by Kim Thúy]()
Em by Kim Thúy
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKim Thúy's Em is a mesmerizing novel of profound power and tenderness, and an affirmation of the greatest act of resistance: love. In the midst of war, an ordinary miracle: an abandoned baby tenderly cared for by a young boy living on the streets of Saigon. The boy is Louis, the child of a long-gone American soldier. Louis calls the baby em Hồng, em meaning little sister, or beloved... -
![Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles by Margaret George]()
Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles by Margaret George
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsShe became Queen of Scots when she was only six days old. Life among the warring factions in Scotland was dangerous for the infant Queen, however, and at age five Mary was sent to France to be raised alongside her betrothed, the Dauphin Francois... -
![Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton]()
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... -
![The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami]()
The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn international bestseller available in English for the first time,a story of forbidden love set against the background of Arabic culture and endless feuds between clansA dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul s Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer and he was murdered... -
![Equator by Miguel Sousa Tavares]()
Equator by Miguel Sousa Tavares
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIt is 1905 and Luis Bernardo Valenca, a thirty-seven-year-old bachelor and owner of a small shipping company, is revelling in Lisbon's luxurious high society. But his life is turned upside down when King Dom Carlos invites him to become governor of Portugal's smallest colony, the island of São Tomé e Principe...Categorized as:
journey 21st-century action-adventure adult book fiction historical historical-fiction -
![The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, Виктор Вебер]()
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, Виктор Вебер
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsThe year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there... -
![Cities of Salt by Abdul Rahman Munif, عبد الرحمن منيف]()
Cities of Salt by Abdul Rahman Munif, عبد الرحمن منيف
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in an unnamed Persian Gulf kingdom in the 1930s, this remarkable novel tells the story of the disruption and diaspora of a poor oasis community following the discovery of oil there. The meeting of the Arabs and the Americans who, in essence, colonize the remote region is a cultural confrontation in which religion, history, superstition, and mutual incomprehension all play a part... -
![Broken April by Ismail Kadare]()
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive... -
-
![Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it.Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz... -
![A Dry White Season by André P. Brink]()
A Dry White Season by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid... -
![Raised from the Ground by José Saramago]()
Raised from the Ground by José Saramago
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA multigenerational family saga that paints a sweeping portrait of twentieth-century PortugalFirst published in 1980, the City of Lisbon Prize–winning Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family—poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago’s own grandparents... -
![White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse]()
White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn extraordinary novel of love, friendship, and betrayal for admirers of Abraham Verghese and Edwidge Danticat Eleanor Morse’s rich and intimate portrait of Botswana, and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and remarkable, is an absorbing and deeply moving story... -
![The Big Green Tent by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Ludmila Ulitskaya]()
The Big Green Tent by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Ludmila Ulitskaya
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn absorbing novel of dissident life in the Soviet Union, by one of Russia's most popular writers The Big Green Tent is the kind of book the term "Russian novel" was invented for. A sweeping saga, it tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience... -
![The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis]()
The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOn the first day of the century, a small town gathers to witness a miracle and unravel its portents: the mysterious reappearance of a lost infant, Pajarita. Later, as a young woman in the capital city—Montevideo, brimming with growth and promise—Pajarita begins a lineage of independent women... -
![Under the Frog by Tibor Fischer]()
Under the Frog by Tibor Fischer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsShortlisted for the Booker Prize, Under the Frog follows the adventures of two young Hungarian basketball players through the turbulent years between the end of World War II and the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956... -
![Space Invaders by Nona Fernández, Luciano Funetta]()
Space Invaders by Nona Fernández, Luciano Funetta
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s ChileSpace Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen... -
![Sofia Petrovna by Aline Werth, Lydia Chukovskaya]()
Sofia Petrovna by Aline Werth, Lydia Chukovskaya
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSofia Petrovna is Lydia Chukovskaya's fictional account of the Great Purge. Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for any good news... -
![Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras]()
Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn 1976 Buenos Aires, a ten-year-old boy lives in a world of school lessons and comic books, TV shows and games of Risk--a world in which men have superpowers and boys can conquer the globe on a rectangle of cardboard. But in his hometown, the military has just seized power, and amid a climate of increasing terror and intimidation, people begin to disappear without a trace...Categorized as:
journey politics 21st-century action-adventure bildungsroman book coming-of-age drama -
-
![State of War by Ninotchka Rosca]()
State of War by Ninotchka Rosca
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn endless festival amidst an endless war is the central image of this stunning novel about the Philippines of the Marcos era, a time of brutality, treachery, and betrayed passion.As the novel opens, our focus, in the Book of Acts, is on three young people—Eliza Hansen, Adrian Banyaga, and Anna Villaverde—as they arrive on the island of K_____ for the annual festival...Categorized as:
journey politics fiction historical-fiction magical-realism war historical 20th-century -
![The Naked Madonna by Jan Wiese]()
The Naked Madonna by Jan Wiese
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe collapse in 1989 of the newly-built church at Perugia, killing the congregation of notables gathered for its consecration, just as they have discovered in themselves the ability to sing in perfect Latin, must surely be ascribed to the miraculous (or devilish) properties of the Madonna and Child altarpiece specially donated by the Vatican...Categorized as:
journey 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction historical historical-fiction -
![Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters by Maria José Silveira]()
Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters by Maria José Silveira
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHer Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters tells the story of Brazil through the histories of a twenty women. It opens with Inaia being born in 1500, at the moment when the Portuguese arrive in Brazil and continues through to the present, tracing this fascinating lineage of women against the historical backdrop of Brazil's ups and downs, challenges and triumphs...Categorized as:
politics journey historical-fiction fiction family indigenous-mc literary-fiction poc-mc -
![Ireland by Frank Delaney]()
Ireland by Frank Delaney
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn the winter of 1951, a storyteller arrives at the home of nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside... -
![The Disappeared by Rebecca J. Sanford]()
The Disappeared by Rebecca J. Sanford
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsInspired by the real mothers and grandmothers who spoke out against Argentina’s military dictatorship, The Disappeared is an award-winning debut about identity, family secrets, and those who endured decades of hardship to expose the truth.In 1976 Buenos Aires, Lorena Ledesma is a housewife with dangerous secrets living under Argentina’s rising military dictatorship...Categorized as:
journey historical-fiction fiction historical audiobook poc-mc action-adventure book -
![The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston]()
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA mystery and a love story spanning five decades, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is an epic portrait of passion and ambition, set against the beautiful, brutal landscape of Newfoundland...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
