The Story of the Stone
Cao Xueqin, translated by David Hawkes and John Minford, Penguin Classics, £14.99
In this work, which is also known as the Red Dream Chamber, three young people, Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai, grow to adulthood in a family whose fortunes are in sad decline. An 18th-century classic, it is beloved by Chinese readers, with the story and its characters as familiar to them as Shakespeare is to us.
Ruined City
Jia Pingwa, translated by Howard Goldblatt University of Oklahoma, £22.95
