The Year in Reviews: Highlights from 2025

This entirely subjective list of 45 highlights from 2025 include reviews of fiction, literature, poetry and non-fiction. Translations remained strong in this year’s list, including literature, poetry and non-fiction, ranging from Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi and Kyrgyz. Non-fiction entries range from history, memoir and essays to art and literature. (The year in question refers to the date of review, not of publication.)

Click on the title for the review. Some also have podcasts. Books by current ARB contributors are listed separately.

Fiction in translation

• Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada
• The Dilemmas of Working Women by Fumio Yamamoto
• Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa
• Miss Ruki by Fumio Takano
• Mistress Koharu by Noboru Tsujihara
• Strange Pictures by Uketsu
• Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan
• The Woman Dies by Aoko Matsuda
• When the Museum Is Closed by Emi Yagi
• Voices of the Fallen Heroes by Yukio Mishima
• The Summer House (Summer at Mount Asama) by Masashi Matsuie
• I Guess All We Have Is Freedom by by Genpei Akasegawa
• Women, Seated by Zhang Yueran
• Portraits in White by Kaori Lai
• Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa
• City of Fiction by Yu Hua
• Elephant Herd by Zhang Guixing
• New Story of the Stone by Wu Jianren (podcast)
• Blowfish by Kyung-Ran Jo
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang
• Snowy Day and Other Stories by Lee Chang-dong
• Castigation by Sultan Raev
• Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq

Fiction

• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• Tales from the Dawn-Lit Mountains by Subi Taba
• Quarterlife by Devika Rege
• Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi
• The South by Tash Aw

History

• The Indian Caliphate, Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince by Imran Mulla
• Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History by Fahad Ahmad Bishara (podcast)
• Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India by Robert Ivermee
• Tipu Sultan: The Saga of Mysore’s Interregnum by Vikram Sampath
• The Forger’s Creed: Reinventing Art History in Early Modern China by JP Park
• A Fractured Liberation: Korea under US Occupation by Kornel Chang (podcast)
• Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan by Richard Overy (podcast)
• The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform by Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian (podcast)
• Ancient India: living traditions by Sushma Jansari and Sureshkumar Muthukumaran

Memoir, essays, literature

• The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyun: Literary Expression and the Natural World by Ping Wang
• Chinese Songs in a French Key: How Judith Gautier’s Book of Jade Introduced Europe to Chinese Poetry by Pauline Yu
• Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue by Yoko Tawada
• Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy
• Rethinking Ourselves: Justice, Reform and Ignorance in Postnormal Times by Anwar Ibrahim

Poetry in translation

• Mirror, poems by Zhang Zao
• The Magpie at Night: The Complete Poems of Li Qingzhao (1084–1151)
• A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi

By ARB contributors

• Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons: How Noborito’s Scientists and Technicians Served in the Second World War and the Cold War by Stephen C Mercado (podcast)
• The Malay Experiment: The Colonial Origins and Homegrown Heroics of The Malay Regiment by Stuart Lloyd
• Brown God’s Child by Smitha Sehgal
• Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880–1945 (paperback edition) by Ian Rapley
• Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires (paperback edition) by David Chaffetz