Asia’s classics are some of the oldest books still read every day. Short wisdom books and poems are the perfect doorway; the great novels of China and Japan are lifetime companions. This guide gives you a simple path: four books for your first month, four for next, and four of the great ones. Every title links to where you can read it — 9 are free right here in Pagine — and every author links to a short biography. For the full 74-book list, see our Asian Classics hub.
Step 1: start here (your first month)
- Tao Te Ching by Laozi (400 BC) — 81 short chapters of quiet wisdom. Read free →
- Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (1912) — The poems that won Asia’s first Nobel Prize. Read free →
- Botchan by Natsume Sōseki (1906) — A funny, short Japanese classic. Read free →
- The Analects by Confucius (475 BC) Read free →
Step 2: next steps
- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en (1592) — The Monkey King escorts a monk to India. (free public-domain editions linked on the list)
- Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki (1914) (free public-domain editions linked on the list)
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyam (1859) — In Edward FitzGerald’s famous English version. Read free →
- Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan (1943) (borrow free)
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Step 3: the great ones (when you are hooked)
- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (1010) (free public-domain editions linked on the list)
- Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791) — Also called The Story of the Stone. (free public-domain editions linked on the list)
- The Mahabharata by Vyasa (300 BC) (free public-domain editions linked on the list)
- Shahnameh by Ferdowsi (1010) — The Persian Book of Kings. (free public-domain editions linked on the list)
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Meet the great Asian authors
Confucius (551–479 BC) — Confucius (Kong Fuzi, “Master Kong”) was a teacher and minor official whose ideas about virtue, family, ritual and good government shaped Chinese — and East Asian — society for over two thousand years. His sayings were collected by his students in the Analects, short exchanges such as “Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.” Start with: The Analects.
Laozi (traditionally 6th century BC) — Laozi (Lao Tzu) is the legendary author of the Tao Te Ching (Daodejing), the founding text of Taoism. Tradition says he was an archivist at the Zhou court who wrote the book’s 81 short chapters as he left China for the west. Start with: Tao Te Ching.
Cao Xueqin (c. 1715–1763) — Cao Xueqin grew up in a wealthy family that lost everything, and spent his last years in poverty writing Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone). The novel follows the decline of the aristocratic Jia family and the love between Jia Baoyu and his cousin Lin Daiyu, with hundreds of characters. Start with: Dream of the Red Chamber.
Lu Xun (1881–1936) — Lu Xun studied medicine in Japan but decided that China needed its mind healed more than its body. His “A Madman’s Diary” (1918) was the first major short story written in modern vernacular Chinese, and The True Story of Ah Q (1921) is a savage satire of national weakness. Start with: The True Story of Ah Q.
Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973–c. 1014) — Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court of Heian Japan. Around 1000–1010 she wrote The Tale of Genji, the life and loves of the “shining prince” Genji, in 54 chapters of subtle psychological observation — often called the world’s first novel. Start with: The Tale of Genji.
Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) — Matsuo Bashō turned the short, playful hokku into an art of stillness and insight — what we now call haiku. His most famous poem, about an old pond and a frog jumping in, is perhaps the best-known short poem in the world. Start with: The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) — Natsume Sōseki studied English literature in London before becoming Japan’s great modern novelist. I Am a Cat (1905), narrated by a sardonic cat, and Botchan (1906), about a hot-headed young teacher, are comic classics; Kokoro (1914), a quiet story of friendship, guilt and loneliness, is still a bestseller in Japan. Start with: Botchan.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) — Rabindranath Tagore — poet, novelist, composer, painter and educator — reshaped Bengali literature and music. His own English versions of his songs, Gitanjali (1912), made him in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Start with: Gitanjali.
Premchand (1880–1936) — Munshi Premchand is the most loved writer in Hindi and Urdu. A schoolteacher who wrote some 300 short stories and a dozen novels, he portrayed village life, poverty, caste and the struggles of ordinary people with warmth and realism. Start with: Idgah.
Rumi (1207–1273) — Jalal al-Din Rumi was a Persian scholar and Sufi mystic who settled in Konya in Anatolia. After a life-changing friendship with the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, he poured out thousands of poems of divine love, and the six books of the Masnavi, which has been called “the Quran in Persian.” His followers founded the Mevlevi order of “whirling dervishes,” and in translation he is one of the best-selling poets in the world. Start with: Masnavi.
Read free, listen free, borrow free
9 of the 74 books on our list are free to read now in the Pagine library — look for “Read free.” For everything else, the Asian Classics hub links each title to free sources: Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, Wikisource and Internet Archive for public-domain texts, LibriVox for free audiobooks, and Open Library or WorldCat to borrow newer books from a library.
The complete 74-book Asian Classics list
Our full list is sorted by era:
- China — 22 books
- Japan — 19 books
- India — 22 books
- Persia & the Arab world — 11 books
See it on the Asian Classics hub, or print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it as a checklist.
Explore the full Asian Classics list, author guides and free books.