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Books like China in ten words
A revealing exploration of a rapidly changing society, unlocked through the everyday words of its people. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with China in ten words.
- contemplative
- grounded
- revealing
- 01
Mao's great famine
Frank Dikötter
A meticulously documented descent into one of history's darkest chapters, where bureaucratic hubris meets unimaginable human suffering.
- 02
Blockchain Chicken Farm
Xiaowei Wang
A surreal, empathetic journey into the physical places where the digital economy actually lives and breathes.
- 03
Do not say we have nothing
Madeleine Thien
A sweeping, melancholic excavation of a fractured family's past, where art and inherited trauma echo across generations.
- 04
Chroniques birmanes
Guy Delisle
A wry, quietly observant graphic travelogue that finds the profound and the absurd in the daily rhythms of life under a military dictatorship.
- 05
The Party
Richard McGregor
An analytical and eye-opening deep dive into the secretive machinery behind a global superpower.
- 06
Shenzhen
Guy Delisle
A wry, quietly lonely portrait of expatriate life in a rapidly changing, unfamiliar city.
- 07
Money
Jacob Goldstein (Cohost of Planet Money podcast)
A witty, globe-trotting tour through the collective hallucination that makes the modern world go round.
- 08
Impératrice
Shan Sa · 2006
An intimate, unapologetic confession from a woman who clawed her way to the pinnacle of an empire.
- 09
Love in a fallen city
Eileen Chang · 2006
A stark, lyrical exploration of longing and the treacherous, shifting dynamics of family and sexual politics.
- 10
Wild Swans
Jung Chang
A sweeping, deeply personal epic that captures the crushing weight of history and the unbreakable endurance of the women who survive it.
- 11
Coders
Clive Thompson
An immersive, anthropological deep-dive into the minds and culture of the people quietly engineering our modern reality.
- 12
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Raymond Carver · 1997
A masterclass in minimalism that finds devastating heartbreak in the quiet, gin-soaked corners of ordinary American lives.
