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If You Liked Memoirs of a Geisha, You Might Enjoy …

All titles shelved in Fiction collection, except as noted: M=mystery, SF=science fiction, SS=short story collection, Y=young adult, W=western.

Cheong, Fiona: The Scent of the Gods

(1991)
This mix of ancestral voices, political intrigue and the coming of age of the orphan Su Yen is set in Singapore in the 1960s and 1970s.
Dalby, Liza: The tale of Murasaki

(2000)

This is a fictional biography of Murasaki Shikibu, author of the Japanese literary classic The Tales of Genji, in the 11th century.
Enchi, Fumiko: The waiting years

(1971)

Awarded the Noma Prize, Japan's highest literary honor, this tale tells the story of a young woman, Tomo, whose mission is to find her husband a mistress.
Fleischman, Lisa Huang: Dream of the walled city

(2000)

Jade, born in 1890, must leave her upper class beginnings behind her in order to survive China's great political upheavals.
Harrison, Kathryn: The binding chair, or, A visit from the Foot Emancipation Society

(2000)

A young Chinese woman escapes an arranged marriage in rural 19th-century China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where she meets an Australian man who will change her life once again.
Jose, Nicholas: The red thread

(2000)

Two lives are intertwined across the centuries in this love story set in modern-day Shanghai and China of 200 years ago.
Kawabata, Yasunari: Snow country

(1996)

A rich Tokyo dilettante, Shimamura, makes three visits to a hot spring in the west of Japan, where a young geisha becomes his mistress.
Lim, Catherine: The bondmaid

(1997)

At the age of four, Han, a young woman born into dire poverty in 1950s Singapore, is sold as a slave to the wealthy house of Wu. Forming a close bond with the young Wu heir, Han's childhood attachment grows into a bittersweet existence of frustrated love and passion.
Liu, Aimee: Cloud Mountain

(1997)

This epic fictional tale is based on the true experience of the author's grandparents — one a Chinese revolutionary and the other a teacher of English — set against a backdrop of two world wars, bigotry and personal tragedy.
McCunn, Ruthanne Lum: The moon pearl

(2000)

The story of three young girls living in China's Pearl River Delta in the 19th century who fought and won a battle for economic and personal independence that changed the future for thousands of others.
Min, Anchee: Empress Orchid

(2004)

Empress Orchid is the story of a strong-willed woman who for generations has been vilified as a grand seductress and murderer. Min draws a vivid portrait of a flawed yet compelling woman and, through her life, of the world of the Chinese court and the sexual and political lives of the royal concubines.
Scott, Joanna C.: The lucky gourd shop

(2000)

Mi Sook, a south Korean orphan, endures hardships and violence throughout her life.
Strauss, Darin: Chang and Eng: A Novel

(2000)

This fictionalized account tells of the real-life story of conjoined twins born in Siam in 1811.
Tsukiyama, Gail: The Samurai's Garden

(1995)

The invasion of China (1930s) provides the backdrop for the relationship between a 20-year-old artist who suffers from tuberculosis and Matsu, a master gardener.
Walbert, Kate: Gardens of Kyoto

(2001)

A quiet novel that tells of vanishing women and their loves, fear filled children, and men damaged by war.
Wang, Lulu: The Lily theater : a novel of modern China

(2000)

Winner of the Nonino Prize for Literature in 1999, this story, based on the author's own experience, tells of a young girl's life, loss, confusion and opportunities following the Cultural Revolution.
Wynd, Oswald: The ginger tree

(1977) )

In 1903 a young Scottish woman travels to Peking to marry a stuffy military attache. In Peking she meets an Japanese aristocrat, Count Kentaro Kurihama, whose path will continue to cross hers during her years in the East.
Yan, Geling: The lost daughter of happiness

(2001)

In the late 1860s a young woman named Fusang is kidnapped from China and sold into prostitution in San Franciso's Chinatown where she eventually finds herself torn between two men.
Yoshikawa, Mako: One hundred and one ways

(1999)

Kiki Takehashi's life is dramatically different from the one lived by her Japanese grandmother whom she has never met. Still, Kiki feels a secret kinship with the grandmother, the legendary geisha Yukiko, and becomes swept up by the story of the proud passionate woman who found the love that has eluded the following generations of Takehashi women.