Your Lunar New Year reading list: historical fiction books set in China by Asian authors

Although much of the novel unfolds in the United States, its emotional and historical foundations are rooted in pre-revolutionary China. Through the mothers’ stories, Tan reconstructs experiences shaped by war, displacement and patriarchal family systems. Arranged as interlinked narratives, the book moves between generations, showing how memories of China are carried, reshaped and sometimes resisted. As one of the most widely read books set in China and its diaspora, it treats history as something embedded in storytelling rather than a fixed backdrop.

Anchee Min reimagines the rise of Empress Dowager Cixi from concubine to ruler of Qing dynasty China. The novel focuses on court politics, ritual and the constant negotiation of power within the Forbidden City. Min’s portrayal foregrounds strategy, education and survival in a rigid imperial hierarchy. The emphasis is less on spectacle than on the mechanics of authority, making it a notable example of books set in China that engage directly with governance and gender within imperial systems.

Set in 1940s Japanese-occupied Shanghai, this novel follows a young Jewish woman navigating love and survival in a city marked by war and cosmopolitan tension. Drawing on Shanghai’s position as a refuge and a contested space, Randel places personal relationships against the pressures of occupation and displacement. The city itself becomes a shifting environment shaped by danger and opportunity. Among books set in China that explore wartime urban life, the novel situates romance within clearly defined historical constraints.

Set from the 1940s through the post-Cultural Revolution era, To Live follows Fugui from rural landowner to impoverished peasant as successive political campaigns reshape his life. The novel moves through land redistribution, collectivisation, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, showing how each policy translates into hunger, loss and instability at the level of the household. Yu Hua avoids ideological explanation, instead recording the cumulative impact of political decisions on work, family structure and survival. The focus on incremental change and repetition gives the novel its power, positioning it as a key work among books set in China that document lived experience.

This novel moves between myth, history and contemporary reflection, using the idea of an elusive utopia as its organising motif. Set partly in China’s past and partly in the present, it questions how history is remembered and narrated. Ge Fei draws on classical references while maintaining a modern sensibility, creating a layered exploration of loss and longing. As a work of historical fiction, it resists linear storytelling, positioning China’s past as fragmented and unresolved.

Drawing on 20th-century Chinese history, particularly the Second Sino-Japanese War, this novel reframes real historical events within a secondary fantasy world shaped by Chinese mythology and military history. Although the nations and geography are fictionalised, the narrative closely mirrors documented campaigns, occupation and wartime atrocities, with sustained attention to the mechanisms of state violence and military command. Kuang’s academic background in Chinese history informs the structure of the conflict and its political logic, while the novel traces how ideology, trauma and ambition influence individual decision-making over time.

These historical fiction books set in China approach the country’s storied past through varied lenses, from domestic rituals to imperial politics and wartime survival.

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