Kazuo Ishiguro, Amy Tan, Jung Chang, Vikram Seth, to name a few. I've always preferred ethnic Asian writers. Although I think Amy is American and Jung, though China-born is now British. They offer such an insightful personal peek into our part of the world, a socio-cultural ecosystem so different from the West. Not to mention a first-hand glimpse into the Asian Psyche.
Catherine Lim's Or Else The Lightning God, a collection of short stories with her trademark flair for wit and irony, probably influenced what I read and how I write today. That was way back in 1984.
Anyway I slept at 4am last night trying to finish Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. His first novel, it was published in 2000 and translated from French to English by Ina Rilke a year later. Dai, a film-maker, was born in China in 1954 and moved to France in 1984 where he has lived and worked ever since.
The book is an enchanting little tale about the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. 2 upper-class city boys are sent to a remote mountain village to be Re-educated by peasants during Mao's notorious Cultural Revolution. In the midst of carrying bucket-loads of excrement, ploughing the field and dancing with sudden death in the coal mines, they meet and flirt with the daughter of the local tailor. They also discover a hidden stash of banned Western Classics in Chinese translation and lose no time devouring every word in secret, transporting themselves to places beyond their sad existence.
I am 3-quarters through but I can say I haven't read something so poignant, humorous and romantic in a long time.