Asian American Masterpieces from Penguin Classics

Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world’s first novel. Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic.

The Hanging on Union Square is a subversively comic, genre-bending satire of bourgeois life by an essential Chinese American voice.

Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature.

This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the art of the Japanese short story, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable practitioners writing today. With an introduction by Haruki Murakami and many stories appearing in English for the first time, this book is a revelation.

The most translated book in the world after the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, or “Book of the Tao,” is a guide to cultivating a life of peace, serenity, and compassion. Through aphorisms and parable, it leads readers toward the Tao, or the “Way”: harmony with the life force of the universe. Traditionally attributed to Lao-tzu, a Chinese philosopher thought to have been a contemporary of Confucius, it is the essential text of Taoism, one of the three great religions of ancient China.

Ryünosuke Akutagawa is one of Japan’s foremost writers—a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humor. “Rashömon”and “In a Bamboo Grove” inspired Kurosawa’s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as “The Life of a Stupid Man,” draw from the author’s own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.

For more than two thousand years, Sun-tzu’s The Art of War has provided leaders with essential advice on battlefield tactics and management strategies. An elemental part of Chinese culture, it has also become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival and success, whether in battle, in business, or in relationships.

The I Ching, or Book of Change, has been consulted through the ages, in both China and the West, for answers to fundamental questions about the world and our place in it. The oldest extant book of divination, it dates back three thousand years to ancient shamanistic practices involving the ritual preparation of the shoulder bones of oxen. From this early form of communication with the other world, it has become the Chinese spiritual book par excellence.