How did Asia fare in the “Best Books” lists of 2021? Not perhaps as well as in 2020, if this (highly unscientific) sampling is anything to go by, despite taking a broad view of what constitutes an “Asian” book.
Book lists seem to have fragmented in 2021, with a larger number of increasingly specific lists (for example, “The 10 Best California Books of 2021” and even “The 7 Best Mushroom Foraging Books of 2021“) in which Asian books might not be expected to appear, making this year’s survey harder to compile. That being said, while translations are always rare on these lists (other than those which make a point of it), this year they are most notable for their overall absence in the general lists. There was some consensus around Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner and Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow.
Click on the title for our review; and see the ARB’s own list of highlights for 2021.
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present by Dara Horn
- Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir by Kat Chow
- Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
- What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
- America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present by John Ghazvinian
- The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian
- Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang
- Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville by Akash Kapur
Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Fiction and Best Non-Fiction
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
- Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
- The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
- What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
- Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption and Vengeance in Today’s China by Desmond Shum
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
- Heaven by Mieko Kawakami
- There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura
- A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
- The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
- China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
- My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei
- The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang
- Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar
- The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void by Jackie Wang
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka
- The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- Hao: Stories by Ye Chun
- Sway with Me by Syed M Masood
- Living with Viola by Rosena Fung
- Asadora!, Vol. 1 by Naoki Urasawa
- Clark and Division: A Novel by Naomi Hirahara
- Never Have I Ever: Stories by Isabel Yap
- Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto
- She Who Became the Sun: A Novel by Shelley Parker-Chan
- Boys Run the Riot, Vol 1 by Keito Gaku
- Himawari House by Harmony Becker
- If I Tell You the Truth by Jasmin Kaur
- Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
- Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
- Mao, Vol. 1 by Rumiko Takahashi
- My Love Mix-Up! Vol. 1 by Wataru Hinekure
- Yasmeen by Saif A Ahmed
- Barakah Beats by Maleeha Siddiqui
- Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom by Matthew Swanson
- The Big Bath House by Kyo Maclear
- The Many Meanings of Meilan by Andrea Wang
- Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
- Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
- Heaven by Mieko Kawakami
- Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri
- The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei
- Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park
- In the Eye of the Wild by Nastassja Martin
- Acrobat, poetry by Nabaneeta Dev Sen
San Francisco Chronicle: 15 best books of 2021
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- O Beautiful by Jung Yun
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
- The Archer by Shruti Swamy
Financial Times
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
- Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen
- The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley
- Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
- The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
- Global Jihad: A Brief History by Glenn E Robinson
- Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
- Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters by Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp
- The Good Asian by Pornsak Pichetshote
Parade: Best YA
- Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
- It All Comes Back to You by Farah Naz Rishi
- The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee
- The Marvelous Mirza Girls by Sheba Karim
- Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon
- XOXO by Axie Oh
- Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q Sutanto
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed
- The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
- Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
- American Betiya by Anuradha D Rajurkar
- Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P Manansala
- Boys Run the Riot by Keito Gaku
- Jenny Mei Is Sad by Tracy Subisak
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
- The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
- Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes by Albert Samaha