Here are 100 books that The Telling fans have personally recommended if you like
The Telling.
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I grew up when the space race was starting, and I became fascinated by all things regarding the planets, rockets, and the cosmos. For several years, I lived in the Houston area and spent hours and hours at the Johnson Space Center, where the history and future of space exploration are on display. The books on my list represent a major theme in my writing, which is futuristic in concept and asks the question: what we would do if our planet became uninhabitable. The answer provides the canvas to explore the advantages of technology, but most importantly, the determination of the human spirit.
This book grabbed me with the horrific opening scene and made me think about how this planet is moving into a climate-threatening situation.
I loved the way Robinson made me feel what it was like to live in a heat-ravaged world. I liked the main character, the head of the Ministry for the Future, because she was believable. She was smart, compassionate, and politically savvy, the kind of person you could trust in this position.
I like that the climate threat is the canvas upon which the characters need to react. For me, it is very relevant to our current situation.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his…
Spellbinding Sentences is for writers who want mastery of their craft, writers who want to know the secrets of powerful prose that will give readers pleasure and keep them turning pages. These techniques are available to anyone who’s willing to practice them consistently.
I’ve had a lifelong admiration for William Morris’s eloquent writings on political optimism. And how these fit with the personal life of his wife Janey and daughter May. This began with my biography of the two women, published by the feminist Pandora Press and continuing through to editing Jane Morris’s Collected Letters. Admiration is also critical engagement rather than simple fandom. We need to think, act, and endeavor to promote how we might live better lives in the world. I love the task of relating individual lives in the context of their time. Biography involves historical imagination to fill the gaps in recorded information and conceive how those in the past thought, felt and behaved.
This is William Morris’s utopian fantasy imaging an egalitarian, ecological, and pacific future for Britain is a perennial political favourite. It challenges each generation to think ‘how we might live’ without capitalist conflict. This book tackles revolutionary change, human nature, work, gender, manufacturing, architecture, economics, ecology, and the uses of imagination in critical analysis. All topics demonstrate the ongoing importance of William Morris’s vision and provoke responses.
News from Nowhere(1890) is the best-known prose work of William Morris and the only significant English utopia to be written since Thomas More's. The novel describes the encounter between a visitor from the nineteenth century, William Guest, and a decentralized and humane socialist future. Set over a century after a revolutionary upheaval in 1952, these "Chapters from a Utopian Romance" recount his journey across London and up the Thames to Kelmscott Manor, Morris's own country house in Oxfordshire. Drawing on the work of John Ruskin and Karl Marx, Morris's book is not only an evocative statement of his egalitarian convictions…
I have a weird imagination and care deeply about being kind in all areas of life. I think people, in general, need to be kinder to one another and to the earth. I find humanity to be too anthropocentric and dismissive of the intelligence of other creatures. The incredible complexity and interconnectedness of nature fascinate me, and I constantly look for connections between two seemingly disparate systems. Writing my book allowed me to put insects at the focal point of planetary control. It was an incredibly fun story to write.
I love how Huxley depicts a utopic community in a sea of unrestrained capitalism. This book got me thinking about solutions to problems I didn’t know existed. It got me to rethink how I view family structures, community, responsible drug use, and meditation. I appreciate how he centered the conflict around his ideal world versus the world imposed on his ideals by reality.
For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with Eastern philosophy to create a paradise on earth. When cynical journalist, Will Farnaby, arrives to research potential oil reserves on Pala, he quickly falls in love with the way of life on the island. Soon the need to complete his mission becomes an intolerable burden and he must make a difficult choice.
In counterpoint to Brave New World and Ape and Essence, in Island Huxley gives…
From Pulitzer Finalist Laurie Sheck (A Monster's Notes), a new speculative literary fiction in the spirit of Italo Calvino, Umberto Ecco and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto that enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing inhumanism.
When I realized years ago that the universe isn’t merely a concrete reality, I turned to metaphysical/visionary books to understand my experience. There weren’t that many books, but the ones I found became dear friends. Now, after decades as a freelance editor, I am writing fiction in this genre because I believe stories can be as powerful as expository writing for awakening consciousness. However, I’ve noticed many metaphysical writers discourage the engagement and commitment needed to make this world a better place. For this reason, I seek to gather—and contribute to—writing that is visionary and also advocates for democracy and social justice.
Although this collection of short stories can be generally categorized as speculative fiction—and most are more specifically science fiction—there is nevertheless a strong visionary element in many of them. As I would expect when reading any book that has many authors, I relate to some stories more than others.
I particularly loved how they collectively built on the amazing legacy of Octavia Butler and did so by explicitly uniting around the social justice theme.
Whenever we envision a world without war, prisons, or capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. These visionary tales span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around…
I’m a Kiwi who has spent most of the past three decades in Asia. My books include Formosan Odyssey, You Don't Know China, and Taiwan in 100 Books. I live in a small town in southern Taiwan with my Taiwanese wife. When not writing, reading, or lusting over maps, I can be found on the abandoned family farm slashing jungle undergrowth (and having a sly drink).
This strange novel consists of vignettes presented as encyclopedia-style entries written by the narrator. He’s an “educated youth” relocated to the fictional rural Hunan village of Maqiao as part of the Cultural Revolution “learn from the peasants” movement, reminiscent of Han Shaogong’s own experience of being sent to the countryside. First published in 1996 and in English in 2003 (expertly translated by Julia Lovell), the novel is better than the premise suggests, and it often features in “best of” Chinese literature lists.
One of the most-talked about works of fiction to emerge from China in recent years, this novel about an urban youth "displaced" to a small village in rural China during the Cultural Revolution is a fictionalized portrait of the author's own experience as a young man. Han Shaogong was one of millions of students relocated from cities and towns to live and work alongside peasant farmers in an effort to create a classless society. Translated into English for the first time, Han's novel is an exciting experiment in form-structured as a dictionary of the Maqiao dialect-through which he seeks to…
I started solo travelling as soon as I left school, and since then I’ve spent many years doing so. I came of age while cycling, kayaking, hiking and skiing across distant lands. The bittersweetness of being alone on the road has become a source of constant fascination for me. The on-again-off-again loneliness creates a state of mind where you’re that much more willing to throw yourself in at the deep end, to meet strangers, and to look, listen and learn. At its very best, solo travel writing seamlessly encompasses two journeys: the physical journey in a foreign land, and the psychological journey within the author.
I must have read dozens of books on China but Colin Thubron’s elegiac account comfortably takes the crown. Behind the Wall captures a unique moment in China’s history when foreigners were first allowed to travel around the country but the nation was yet to be influenced by the outside world. Having learnt to speak Mandarin in advance of travelling, the author probes deep into the rural areas and distant desert outposts of a closed communist empire still recovering from the ravages of the Cultural Revolution.
A powerful unforgettable journey through China with one of our greatest travel writers.
'An achievement of great and lasting brilliance' Patrick Leigh Fermor
Having learned Mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron set off on a 10,000 mile journey from Beijing to the borders of Burma. He travelled through the wind-swept wastes of the Gobi desert and finished at the far end of the Great Wall.
What Thubron reveals is an astonishing diversity, a land whose still unmeasured resources strain to meet an awesome demand, and an ancient people still reeling from the devastation of the…
Why: Earth 2278 is a passionate book about enduring human emotional limits. A futuristic thriller with compassion, gallows humor, a love story, high-stakes battles, and a tight bond of camaraderie. In this futuristic adventure, it blends a creative science of a new world-building, set upon a tyrannical leader who runs…
I took my first course about Chinese politics in 1973, when the country was still in the tumultuous last years of the Mao era. In a teaching career that began in 1982, I have spent long periods of research and teaching in China and Hong Kong. China’s shifting course has been a constant source of fascination, encouragement, and at times dismay. It is hard to imagine that the impoverished and unstable country of the 1970s would rise to become such a major economic power, one that despite its impressive expansion still faces intractable barriers to its future advancement.
This instant classic was the first to draw deeply on a wide range of previously inaccessible sources about the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. Highly readable and authoritative, it provides extensive insight into Mao’s actions and those of his subordinates and victims and documents the destructive impact of these conflicts all across China from the initial salvos at Peking University in May 1966 to the immediate aftermath of Mao’s death, which led to the arrest of Mao’s most ardent radical followers, the “Gang of Four”.
The Cultural Revolution was a watershed event in the history of the People's Republic of China, the defining decade of half a century of communist rule. Before 1966, China was a typical communist state, with a command economy and a powerful party able to keep the population under control. But during the Cultural Revolution, in a move unprecedented in any communist country, Mao unleashed the Red Guards against the party. Tens of thousands of officials were humiliated, tortured, and even killed. Order had to be restored by the military, whose methods were often equally brutal.
I’ve been fascinated by China and Chinese culture since I was a kid. I had bilingual books with Chinese characters on one page and an English translation on the other. I’d spend hours looking for patterns to match characters to their English meaning. That process became easier once I started studying Chinese at university. I’ve since lived in Beijing and Shanghai and return to China regularly, either by plane or by book.
Stories can be sticky. They attach memories to places. I first visited San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early nineties. There were no mobile phones then or digital maps, so I wandered the streets and browsed the stores, admiring the green-tiled roofs and bright red lanterns, imagining I was back in Beijing. Growing hungry, I entered the first restaurant I saw. I sat, ordered, and pulled a paperback out of my coat pocket as I waited for my homestyle tofu to arrive. Diners ate. Waiters cleared plates. People picked up their takeaways. And I read.
A few minutes later, the waiter returned. “You,” he said, “have a phone call.” He pointed at the desk beside the door. The restaurant’s phone handset was off the cradle and lay on the counter. “That’s impossible,” I thought. No one knew where I was. I didn’t know where I was. But there was the phone,…
Poet Zhang Yonglin is sentenced to a labor camp he ironically describes as a haven amidst the hysteria of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After he marries a woman he had seen eight years earlier, the story becomes, on one level, an analogy between his temporary sexual impotence and the postion of intellectuals. A year later he is ready to abandon his wife and escape from the camp. Cameo appearances by philosophic and literary figures (Marx and Meng-tz, Othello and Song Ji) and discussing China and sex allow the incorporation of non-novelistic elements while indulging in gallows humor.
I’m a historian, educator, and author with an abiding interest in stories that help bridge cultural divides. I first encountered tales of China as an elementary school student in Singapore. Years later, I studied Chinese and backpacked through China, after which I earned my M.A. in Asian Studies. I would go on to become a high school instructor, and this experience helped me teach AP World History ™ and IB (International Baccalaureate) History. I began writing my Jackie Tempo series as a way of providing accessible content in the classroom. Historical fiction has always helped provide deeper context for me and my students.
My future husband and I read excerpts of this book as undergraduates—great preparation for our post-graduation trek into China. We were determined to track down his great-aunt in Chengdu—no mean feat in the late 80s, given the absence of cellphones and internet.
A cover blurb notes this book is in the “tradition of Orwell and Solzhenitsyn” but I’d point instead to Heller (Catch-22) for context on China’s Cultural Revolution. “Chairman Mao is a Rotten Egg,” for example, reveals strategies that made sense when we met my then-fiancé’s great aunt. She shared how her husband was thrown in jail given his training as a doctor, and how she responded to the Red Guards who had come for him: “Good! Take him away,” she feigned bravery, “he’s a pain.” They brought him back two days later.
". . . in the great tradition of Orwell and Solzhenitsyn; its true subject is the survival-and sometimes the defeat-of the human spirit in its lonely quest for integrity." -Time
"The almost childlike directness of Chen's tales. . . is captured in the very lightly revised translations of this new edition. . . Highly recommended." -Choice
A classic of modern world literature, this collection of stories provides a vivid and poignant eyewitness view of everyday life in China during the Cultural Revolution. For this edition, Howard Goldblatt has thoroughly revised the text and updated it…
Mother of Trees is the first book in an epic fantasy series about a dying goddess, a broken world, and a young elf born without magic in a society ruled by it.
When the ancient being that anchors the world’s power begins to fail, the consequences ripple outward—through prophecy, politics,…
Being half-Chinese and half-Peranakan, I grew up in a mixed cultural environment but went to secondary school with a strong Chinese culture. I became aware of my inferior knowledge, not just of the language, but also Chinese culture and history. Hence I immersed myself in the Chinese environment. But there is so much in this long and illustrious history of one of the oldest civilisations that my initial motive to learn was soon replaced by a genuine interest. Now I am always on the lookout for anything related to China, its history, and the Chinese culture.
I always like reading anything about day-to-day living in China. In this book, I loved the descriptions of what life is like in rural China, eg making their own reed shoes and building their own roofs. On the surface, this book is about the idyllic life in the countryside. However, it is set during the cultural revolution but so subtly described in the back-drop that it is perfect for the target audience. We often read about the people banished to the countryside, and this book tells me what happens to them when they arrive.
I also enjoyed it as it is a translated text, so there is a sense that this is authentic.
A classic, heartwarming tale set to the backdrop of the Chinese cultural revolution, with the timeless feels of Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea.
A beautifully written, timeless tale by bestselling Chinese author Cao Wenxuan, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award. When Sunflower, a young city girl, moves to the countryside, she grows to love the reed marsh lands - the endlessly flowing river, the friendly buffalo with their strong backs and shiny round heads, the sky that stretches on and on in its vastness. However, the days are long, and the little girl is lonely. Then she…
