A kind of Chinese Dr. Zhivago about a married army doctor who was torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village.

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

A powerful, moving story tells the lives of four Chinese women in pre1949 China and the lives of their American-born daughters in California.

A classic novel by a Nobel Prize-winning author offers a graphic view of China during the reign of the last Emperor, and tells the story of an honest farmer and his wife as they struggle with the sweeping changes of the twentieth century.

A legend in China, where it won the major literary awards and inspired an Oscar-nominated film, this is a novel of family, myth, and memory, set during the fratricidal barbarity of the 1930s, when the Chinese battled both Japanese invaders and each other.

From a member of China's New Wave, three novellas of a disturbing intensity make their US debut--including ``Raise the Red Lantern,'' the basis of an acclaimed 1991 film. Set in provincial China of the 1930's, all three stories evoke a place where a concubine might have attended college and a landlord's son might have learned to play tennis at his boarding school--but where the harsh old ways still prevail. Women, even the most spirited, are broken by men's brutality and by other women's spite.