Books Set in Asia: Southern Countries

Book Summary

During WW2, English musician Norah is in Singapore with her 8-year-old daughter, Sally. As the Japanese approach, she makes the desperate decision to send Sally on a ship out of the area to keep her safe. Norah stays behind to care for her husband and elderly parents.

When Singapore falls, Norah is crammed aboard the Vyner Brooke merchant ship, but two days later, the ship is bombarded and sinks. Norah, along with Welsh nurse Sister Nesta, survives, only to be captured and sent to a POW camp. Together, Nesta and Norah work to help other POWs, including using their musical talents to bring comfort.

Book Summary

After leaving India for the US, Remy was happy to distance himself from his cold mother. Years later, he’s now returning to Bombay to adopt a baby. His mother is now at the end of her life in a hospital, and is no longer speaking.

Remy finds himself feeling extremely guilty for not understanding how ill she really was and becomes determined to help her recover. But in his mother’s apartment, he finds a photo that sets off the unveiling of family secrets. As he’s on the cusp of becoming a parent himself, he’s forced to reevaluate his entire childhood and his relationship to his parents.

Book Summary

When Lalloo was only 7, his brother was murdered right outside his family’s labor camp hut by men who appeared with dogs and guns and cricket bats. His parents and sister remain bonded slaves, working as brick makers to pay off their debts. Lalloo leaves his family and doesn’t see them again for many years.

Now an adult in his 20s, Lalloo works as a driver in the city, still saving rupees in hopes of freeing his parents and sister. When he’s not driving, he goes through other ill-fated attempts to make more money.

Book Summary

Lawyer Lesley and her husband Robert, a veteran, live at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang, Malaysia. When Robert’s old friend, writer “Willie” Somerset Maugham, arrives for a visit, it threatens to upend all of their lives.

Novelist Maugham is exhausted by his marriage of convenience that helps conceal his homosexuality. Additionally, he’s lost his savings, his career is in a slump, and his health is failing. He hopes his time at Cassowary House will inspire his next book. He soon discovers that the lives of Lesley and Robert are much more complicated than they look from the outside. From connections to a Chinese revolutionary to the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder, Maugham now has plenty to write about.

Book Summary

Written in the voice of her own mother, Tswb Muas, Kao Kalia Yang’s memoir begins in the Hmong village of Dej Tshuam in the highlands of Laos, where Tswb’s childhood was upended by America’s Secret War.

As the U.S. withdrew and the Pathet Lao government launched genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, Tswb’s family fled into the jungle, where a teenage Tswb met the man she would marry. At only 16 years old, she made the devastating choice to leave her own mother behind to follow him to a refugee camp in Thailand.

From Thailand, Tswb and her husband eventually resettled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where they enrolled in high school as adults, worked grueling jobs, and raised seven children while fighting to preserve their Hmong identity.

Book Summary

Genevieve was an only child living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Singapore, until an unexpected sibling, Arin, appeared. The girls bond over their knowledge that failure in life is not an option. They begin to depend only on each other, ignoring other friendships or socializing in pursuit of academic perfection.

However, after a major betrayal, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love.

Book Summary

While this memoir was published in 2025, it’s based on travel writer Rick Steves’ journals from his 1978 trip on the “Hippie Trail” from Istanbul, Turkey, to Kathmandu, Nepal, which was the ultimate goal for so many backpackers in the 1970s. As a 23-year-old on a shoestring budget, he and his friend Gene braved wild bus rides, monsoons, and endless adventures across six countries.

Be sure to read both the preface and afterword, which were written more recently, reflecting back on his younger years. For the bulk of this memoir, he opted to leave his journal entries from the trip unedited as a time capsule, despite knowing that his younger self sometimes sounds naive, insensitive, and even ignorant. However, those moments are balanced by his good-natured curiosity, compassion, and awareness.

Book Summary

This suspenseful saga is set both during the war and in present-day Việt Nam. Trang and Quỳnh are sisters from a rural village, and like many in the region, their parents are struggling to survive. In 1969, the daughters take the desperate step of becoming “bar girls” in Sài Gòn, drinking, flirting (and more) with American GIs in return for money.

Trang becomes involved with a charming helicopter pilot named Dan. Decades later, we’ll see Dan return to Việt Nam with his wife in an attempt to heal from his PTSD and reckon with secrets from his past.

Also, in the present day, we’ll meet Phong as he tries to find his parents, a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman. He was abandoned at an orphanage as a baby and grew up being called names because he was a “child of the enemy”. He dreams of finding a way to America in hopes of a better life for his family.

Book Summary

Sang Ly and her husband, Ki Lim, live in a shantytown built upon Cambodia’s largest municipal waste dump, where they make their living by picking recyclables from the trash.

Their poor living conditions are made even more challenging by their struggles to care for their chronically ill son and to pay their ill-tempered “rent collector” named Sopeap. But when Sang discovers a secret about Sopeap, the two strike a deal that will change both of their lives.

Book Summary

Kerala, on India’s southern coast, is a slender state with almost 373 miles of Arabian Sea coastline and beaches. Being surrounded by water makes this a popular tourist destination. But for the family at the heart of this novel, being surrounded by water has plagued three generations. In every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.

This new literary fiction epic is a tale of love, faith, and medicine in which the family is seeking answers to this strange secret. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi, literally “Big Mother”, will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life.

Book Summary

The Binat family has been the subject of a vicious rumor, which destroyed their wealth along with the marriage prospects of their daughters. This doesn’t matter to their second daughter, Alys, who is happy working as a teacher. She worries that many of her female students will get married and drop out of school before graduation, so she teaches them about Jane Austen and other literary heroes, hoping to inspire the girls to dream of more.

When Mrs. Binat gets an invitation to the biggest wedding in years, she’s certain the family’s luck is going to change, and she’ll find husbands for her daughters. The oldest sister, Jena, catches the eye of wealthy entrepreneur Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, but his friend, Valentine Darsee, is unimpressed by the Binat family. As the days go by, Alys sees that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding who he really is.

Book Summary

When journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer stood at the summit of Mt. Everest in 1996, he had no idea that a “murderous storm” was headed for the mountain. In this bestselling non-fiction title, he provides an epic and guilt-ridden account of the disaster that would ultimately claim eight lives.

The book follows Krakauer’s entire journey, including how he paid for the expensive climb, the preparations required, and his step-by-step quest to the summit. Additionally, you’ll learn about the local Sherpas and how they are impacted both positively and negatively by the influx of climbers each year.

Book Summary

At the Army Navy Club, three nurses are trying to escape their own past and think they’ve found the perfect assignment in paradise. However, the new friends, U.S. Navy nurse Eleanor Lindstrom, U.S. Army nurse Penny Franklin, and Filipina nurse Lita Capel, are soon caught between the U.S. military and the Imperial Japanese Army. 

As fighting comes to the island, they find themselves first in conflict conditions, and then as the first female prisoners of war. Despite food shortages and total disregard for the Geneva Convention, the trio works hard to keep hope alive in their minds and for all the inmates. 

Book Summary

Travel back in time to 1950s India to meet Lakshmi. After fleeing from an abusive marriage, she settles in the vibrant city of Jaipur. Her talents as a henna artist enable her to survive on her own. She becomes a confidante to her clients in the wealthy upper class. 

As her reputation grows as someone who provides both beautiful henna work and sound advice, she helps her clients in new ways as an herbalist. Then, Lakshmi is shocked when her past resurfaces. The husband she escaped arrives in Jaipur, along with a girl he says is Lakshmi’s 13-year-old sister.  

The book covers a full year in Lakshmi’s life. You’ll find yourself absorbed by the vivid descriptions of the culture and scenery, and enamored with Lakshmi’s strength.

Heads Up: Abortions are part of the plot.

Book Summary

In the 1970s, author Chantha Nguon became a refugee when dictator Pol Pot began the Cambodian genocide. In this memoir, she recounts her experiences, which included the loss of her house, her country, and her family.

Her journey begins and ends in Cambodia, with years spent as a refugee in Saigon, war-ravaged Vietnam, and Thailand before finally returning home to a changed Cambodia. Along the way, she survived by any means necessary, including cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture-nurse treating refugees abused by Thai authorities, and weaving silk. 

Through it all, she relied on memories of her mother’s kitchen to keep her connection to her country. But above all, her mother’s “slow noodles” approach to healing and cooking, which prioritizes time and care over expediency, kept her going.

Book Summary

Jaelee has a high-pressure PR job in Miami and desperately needs the sabbatical she has scheduled in Bali. So when her boss calls to demand that she return early, she quits.

She’s determined to make the most of her new freedom in this gorgeous setting before returning to her real life in Miami. Within two months, Jaelee has found a new group of friends and connected with a Scottish man named Alistair in this uplifting novel, which is full of friendship, laughter, and romance.

Book Summary

When Julia’s dad, a successful New York attorney, disappears, she has no idea what could have happened. Four years later, she finds an old love letter he wrote to a woman in Burma. Determined to follow every lead, Julia travels to Burma to investigate her father’s past. 

After traveling to Kalaw, the village of the woman from the letter, Julia meets a man named U Ba, who appears to know her and has a story to share about her father and his past.

Book Summary

In this split timeline mystery, you’ll travel to Bangkok and experience Thailand in both the early 70s and the present day. Reclusive artist Laura is watching her mom slide into dementia when a stranger contacts her. He claims to be her brother, who disappeared 40 years earlier. 

Despite warnings from her sister that the call is a scam, Laura visits Bangkok in search of the truth. 

The book alternates between Laura’s investigative travels and her parents’ time in Bangkok, where they tried to create an American life in an exotic location. While they strived to keep up perfect appearances, both parents kept secrets from those around them.

Book Summary

While this novel is set in contemporary Vietnam, the interwoven stories of three characters reveal the lasting effects of war. 

Maggie is an art curator born in Vietnam, but currently residing in the US. When she returns to her birth country looking for clues in her father’s disappearance, she meets Hung, who has run a pho stall for decades. He provides a meeting place for dissident artists like her dad. One of Hung’s regular customers is Tu’, a young tour guide who leads American vets on war tours. 

The three very different characters come together as Maggie tries to piece together her past in this complex story of art, love, loss, and hope.

Book Summary

Independence takes you into the lives of three sisters during a traumatic period of history, the partition of British India into India and Pakistan along religious lines. At the same time, a carved-out area became Pakistan, which was assigned to Muslims. It was one of the largest human displacements in history. 

Sister Priya is intelligent and determined to follow in her father’s footsteps to become a doctor, even though that isn’t a normal path for a woman. Deepa is considered the beautiful one, and dreams of a marriage that will increase her family’s status AND bring her joy. Jamini is a talented quiltmaker with deep passions she doesn’t reveal to her family. 

When Deepa falls in love with a Muslim and partition is declared, the sisters are separated and propelled onto different paths. They fear for themselves, but also for what could happen to each other.

Book Summary

Rachel, a New Yorker, agrees to spend the summer in Singapore, her boyfriend Nick’s home country. He just failed to mention one crucial aspect of his life. He is considered Singapore’s most eligible bachelor, and his family is crazy rich. The family is essentially royalty, with younger generations expected to comply with the older generations’ wishes for their life (and spouse) choices.

This book is rich with descriptions of Singapore’s sights, sounds, and tastes. It offers a very entertaining glimpse into the lifestyle of the 1% from both inside and outside perspectives. According to Angela’s Singaporean friends, these crazy stories are actually not so far-fetched.

Book Summary

Gabby has a career in London, along with two sons out of the house and in university. Her husband has always traveled extensively for work, so when he takes a new job in Pakistan, she decides to join him, allowing them to spend some quality time together. 

Pakistan is a country of contradictions, with danger looming from the Taliban, gorgeous landscapes, and welcoming locals. 

While in Pakistan, Gabby receives a shocking letter about her childhood on the Cornish coast. The book includes flashbacks to Cornwall that will also take you to experience the English coast as she tries to reconcile her memories with those of her sister.

Book Summary

This remarkable autobiography tells the story of Malala Yousafzai, who refused to give up on her right to an education when the Taliban took control of her region of northern Pakistan in 2012. Although she was only 15, her voice was enough of a threat to cause her attempted murder on her way home from school. 

Miraculously, she survived, and the attack emboldened her instead of silencing her. Her ongoing efforts to support education for girls led her from Pakistan to the UN. She also became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. 

Book Summary

Ah Boon is growing up in the last days of British rule in Singapore. He lives in a small fishing village but would rather play with the girl next door, Siok Mei, than go fishing. Despite his disinterest in fishing, he discovers that he has an uncanny ability to locate uncharted islands, which are rich with fish. 

By the time Ah Boon and Siok Mei are teenagers, the Japanese army has arrived and occupied Singapore as part of WW2. This coming-of-age story is set against the backdrop of Singapore’s legacy of British colonialism, the Japanese occupation during World War II, and the pursuit of modernity. Readers say the beautiful writing transports you to a different time and place and includes a hint of magical realism to emphasize the human-land connection.

Book Summary

In 1981, Sashi was sixteen years old with dreams of becoming a doctor. Instead, over the next decade, her dream was put on hold as her four beloved brothers and their friend K were swept up in the mounting violence of their country’s civil war. At K’s suggestion, Sashi begins working as a medic at the field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers.

The Tamil Tigers are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But, Sashi begins to question where she stands when the Tigers murder one of her teachers. She’s then offered the opportunity to be part of a dangerous secret project documenting human rights violations.

Book Summary

In 2006, Laura, a fashion journalist, experienced a dramatic turn in her life when she moved with her husband and two young children to a dilapidated bungalow in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

When she needs a maid, she hires Mariel, a Filipina woman who hasn’t seen her own children for ten years. She’s determined to escape the abuse in her past and marry the man she loves despite an ongoing battle against prejudice.

The women come from significantly different backgrounds, but each is on a path of learning and discovery.

Book Summary

In this non-fiction title, Patricia Evangelista, a journalist from Manila, provides a brave account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens as part of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. For six years, she immersed herself in the world of killers and survivors, highlighting the fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

As part of telling the story of Duterte, Evangelista also covers broader history, from the “discovery” of the Philippines by Magellan and the “liberation” of the country by the United States. Readers appreciate learning this additional history and the analysis of the importance of language and semantics used by the administration.

Book Summary

Seven-year-old Raami lived in a carefully guarded world of royal privilege until her father brought home news about the civil war raging in the streets of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. 

Over the next four years, Raami endures starvation, forced labor, and survives the genocide that killed more than ¼ of the population of the country, including many of her family members. Throughout it all, she finds comfort only in the mythical legends and poems her father shares with her.

Book Summary

Despite having never traveled outside North America, Canadian Jaime Zeppa embarked on a solo adventure to teach in Bhutan, a Buddhist country in the Himalayas. In this autobiography, she shares her day-to-day experiences in this emerging tourist destination and her bigger-picture personal realizations during her time in the country. 

Tight government restrictions on tourists, including substantial financial requirements, make this all-access peek into this remote, unspoiled location and its culture a rare opportunity. Luckily, she describes her experiences in a way that will make you feel like you are right there with her throughout this travel memoir.