U.K. newspaper The Telegraph recently selected 10 of the best Asian novels of all time, with the Chinese novel “A Dream of Red Mansions” topping the list.

The newspaper praised the novel and said, “With a cast of more than 400 characters, this episodic novel written in the vernacular rather than classical Chinese tells of two branches of an aristocratic family with a tragic love story at its humane heart.”

Among the 10 books, except “A Dream of Red Mansions” and “One Thousand and One Nights,” the remaining eight novels are all contemporary novels written during the 20th century. India won the most spots with four novels on the list.

Here is the list of the winners.

    1 A Dream of Red Mansions

    Cao Xueqin (printed 1791)

    2 A Fine Balance

    Rohinton Mistry (1995) The Telegraph: “Set during the Emergency of 1970 (a period marked by political unrest, torture and detentions), Mistry is critical of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, although she is never named. Four characters from very different backgrounds are brought together by rapid social changes.”

    3 Rashomon

    Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1915) The Telegraph: “The author of more than 150 modernist short stories, but no full-length novels, Akutagawa published ‘Rashomon’ in a university magazine when he was just 17. Just 13 pages long, it comprises seven statements regarding the murder of a Samurai and his wife’s disappearance.”

    4 One Thousand and One Nights

    Anonymous (first published in English 1706) The Telegraph: “Wiley Scheherazade diverts the sultan from her execution with the poetic and riddlesome adventures of Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad and mystical creatures. Packing in crime, horror, fantasy and romance, it influenced authors as diverse as Tolstoy, Dumas, Rushdie, Conan Doyle, Proust and Lovecraft.”

    5 Heat and Dust

    Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) The Telegraph: “In this compelling novel by the only person to have won both the Booker Prize and an Oscar, a woman travels to India to learn the truth about her step-grandmother and her life under the British Raj of the 1920s.”

    6 All About H Hatterr

    G V Desani (1948) The Telegraph: “It’s the glorious mashup of English and Indian colloquialism that makes this book, about the son of a European merchant and a Malayan lady, such a wild, whimsical delight. Anthony Burgess admired its ‘creative chaos that grumbles at the restraining banks.’”

    7 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

    Haruki Murakami (1994) The Telegraph: “This labyrinthine and hallucinogenic novel gets going when Toru Okada’s cat disappears in suburban Tokyo. He consults a pair of psychic sisters who appear to him in dreams and reality. But although Murakami’s plot meanders, it never loses its pace or its humanity.”

    8 Spring Snow

    Yukio Mishima (1969-71) The Telegraph: “Before committing ritual suicide in November 1970, Mishima posted this tetralogy of novels (named after a dry lunar plain once believed awash with water) to his publisher. It’s a saga of 20th-century Japan, in which a law student imagines a school friend constantly reincarnated.”

    9 Midnight’s Children

    Salman Rushdie (1980) The Telegraph: “Magic realism meets postcolonial India in the ambitious, colorful and clever novel which was awarded the ‘Booker of Bookers’ Prize. Hero Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on Aug. 15, 1947: the second of India’s independence and is endowed with an extraordinary talent.”

    10 The God of Small Things

    Arundhati Roy (1997) The Telegraph: “This intense and exquisitely written tale of fraternal twins unfolds against a backdrop of communism, the caste system, and Christianity in Kerala from the ’60s to the ’90s. ‘Change is one thing,’ writes Roy in her Booker Prize-winning debut, ‘Acceptance is another.’”(SD-Agencies)