Hidden Heroes offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK to describe the average citizen who navigates the complexities of daily life with quiet dedication for their work and country.The anthology is divided into three thematic sections—Identities, Communities, and Po...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the author of the international bestseller Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, a heartfelt invitation to reflect on your relationship with reading and celebrate the joys of books.Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure?How often do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of ...

Banned in China, this controversial and politically charged novel tells the story of the search for an entire month erased from official Chinese history.Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less—except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they...

A New York Times Notable book, this memoir by a journalist who lived in a small city in China is "a vivid and touching tribute to a place and its people" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remar...

From one of China’s most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country’s meteoric economic and social transformation.Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular—“people,” “leader,” “reading,” “writing,” “Lu Xun” (one of the most influential Chinese writers of the twentieth century), ...

An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter centuryMore than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China’s economic boom, an experience chronicled in his book River Town, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan province to instruct students from the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled ...

From the award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash: an urgent, timely novel that follows an aspiring author, an outrageous book idea, and a lone journalist’s dogged quest for truth in the Internet age.New York, 2005. Chinese expatriate Feng Danlin is a fiercely principled reporter at a small news agency that produces a website read by the Chinese diaspora around the world. Danlin’s explosive exposés have made him legendary among readers—and feared by Communist...

**"A must-read for anyone interested in the art of intuitively knowing what others feel." --Haemin Sunim, bestselling author of The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down and Love for Imperfect ThingsImprove your nunchi. Improve your life.**The Korean sixth sense for winning friends and influencing people, nunchi (pronounced noon-chee) can help you connect with others so you can succeed in everything from business to love. The Power of Nun...

New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice; Real Simple Best of the Month; Library Journal Editors' PickIn the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China's widely acclaimed yet insular education system that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and educationWhen students in Shanghai...

A lightly surreal story of misfortune, menace, and high-end stereo equipment in the cutthroat, capitalistic world of modern China.An NYRB Classics OriginalThe hero of The Invisibility Cloak lives in contemporary Beijing—where everyone is doing their best to hustle up the ladder of success while shouldering an ever-growing burden of consumer goods—and he’s a loser. Well into his forties, he’s divorced (and still doting on his ex), childless, and liv...

A "close-up look at the cloistered country" ( USA Today), See You Again in Pyongyang is American writer Travis Jeppesen's "probing" and "artful" ( New York Times Book Review) chronicle of his travels in North Korea--an eye-opening portrait that goes behind the headlines about Trump and Kim, revealing North Koreans' "entrepreneurial spirit, and hidden love of foreign media, as well as their dreams and fears" ( Los Angeles Times).In...

“Parker’s exquisitely titled book is as off-kilter as a Kurt Vonnegut novel, and wholly absorbing.” —Maclean’sJeff Parker went to Russia intending to write a book about the country’s resurgence as a major global superpower under President Vladimir Putin and about the emergence, for perhaps the first time in history, of a Russian middle class. But Russia tends to resist any attempt to pin it down. In the midst of the social and financial upheaval of the yea...