The Mandarin Club

Long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2023, this is less a China book than one in which China constantly looms in the background. Set in the early twentieth century in what is now Malaysia when it was a British colony, 'The House of Doors' contains William Somerset Maugham and Dr Sun Yat-sen as fictionalised characters.

Somerset Maugham was one of the most successful authors of his day, but in this story he is fresh off a financial misfortune and desperate for a comeback. 'The House of Doors' contains the sensational murder trial of Ethel Proudlock, which made headlines around the world in its day. Somerset Maugham would later turn it into his short story 'The Letter', which was eventually made into a movie with Bette Davies.

Meanwhile Sun Yat-sen is paying visits as he tries to revolutionise his beloved country.

In this spy thriller, Daniel Lohr is fleeing the Nazis on a ship to Shanghai. He has been asked to carry a mysterious package for his uncle, who he will meet there. On the boat he meets a colourful and shady collection of characters, many of whom he will see again when he arrives.

1930s Shanghai is a sexy and seedy place, and murder is just business. Lohr has to negotiate this world, while also maintaining an unlikely romance.

Subtitled 'Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language' this book is the recollection of a lifelong linguist learning Mandarin as an adult. It is full of recollections about the challenges of the language and observations about its history and relationship with the world's oldest civilisation.

Before living in East Asia, Fallows was assistant dean of languages and linguistics at Georgetown University. The book is accessible, relatable, and a goldmine of observations and insights about the Chinese language.

Guo Xiaolu is one of China's most successful living authors. Her books include 'I Am China' (which this group covered in 2022), and 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers'.

'20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth' is a coming-of-age story that has a lot to say about the changing role of women in modern China. Fenfang has travelled 1800 miles to seek her fortune in Beijing. Determined to live a modern life, she works as a cleaner, gets into bad romances, and finally has a sort-of big break with work as a film extra. She makes sense of much of this by conversing with 'Heavenly Bastard in the Sky' in her imagination.