Reading path
The Eastern Canon
Thousands of years of wisdom, poetry, and storytelling from traditions that the Western canon has too often ignored. Sacred texts that reshape how duty and desire are understood. Epics that contain entire civilisations. Poets who captured eternity in a few lines. This path is an invitation to step outside familiar literary coordinates and discover how much of the world's greatest writing has always been elsewhere.
In the app a path keeps your place, marks what you have read, and hands you the next work when you are ready for it.
The first button needs the app on this device; the second gets it there.
The route
- 1. The Bhagavad GitaVyasa, 200 BCE
- 2. The DhammapadaAnonymous, 300 BCE
- 3. The Tao Te ChingLaozi, 600 BCE
- 4. ZhuangziZhuang Zhou, 300 BCE
- 5. MahabharataVyasa, 400 BCE
- 6. The ShahnamehFerdowsi, 1010
- 7. The MasnaviRumi, 1273
- 8. Quiet Night ThoughtsLi Bai, 730 CE
- 9. Dream of the Red ChamberCao Xueqin, 1791
- 10. The Tale of GenjiMurasaki Shikibu, 1010
- 11. The Pillow BookSei Shōnagon, 1002
- 12. KokoroNatsume Sōseki, 1914
- 13. Snow CountryYasunari Kawabata, 1956
- 14. The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthMatsuo Bashō, 1689
- 15. The Wind-Up Bird ChronicleHaruki Murakami, 1994
- 16. RamayanaValmiki, 200 BCE
- 17. AnalectsConfucius, 479 BCE
- 18. Journey to the WestWu Cheng'en, 1592
- 19. Romance of the Three KingdomsGuanzhong Luo, 1400
- 20. The Art of WarSun Tzu, 500 BCE
- 21. The QuranUnknown, 610 CE
- 22. The Divan of HafezHafez, 1390
- 23. Rickshaw BoyLao She, 1936
- 24. The Nine Cloud DreamKim Man-jung, 1687
- 25. The DwarfCho Se-hui, 1978
- 26. Love In A Fallen CityEileen Chang, 1943