"Binu and the Great Wall" by Su Tong, translated by Howard Goldblatt; Canongate

A new installment in Canongate's innovative myths series, Su Tong's "Binu and the Great Wall," breathes fresh life into a 2000-year-old Chinese tale of poverty and class, power and powerlessness.

Binu's epic journey to bring her husband winter clothes at the Great Wall construction site is rife with familiar archetypes — including hidden identities, larger-than-life traveling companions, new lands and laws, and protracted vignettes — that often exist in oral stories. But most captivating is the tale's vivid, magical-realist landscape, where "even the water flowing in the moonlight (gasps) tensely," men become deer and, in villages where crying has been forbidden, tears are the most powerful force around.

Binu's tears escape through her hair, evoking memories, causing floods and affecting everyone and everything around her, and in turn, engender the book's central question: "What was the point of crying?" This message, embodied in a sorrowful, headstrong protagonist unafraid to die or act outside the crowd, rises above the story's fantastical elements and reaches across geographical walls to inspire people to fight government control and censorship as long as "all kings want to build walls."

"The Painter from Shanghai" by Jennifer Cody Epstein; W.W. Norton

What is known about 20th-century Shanghai painter Pan Yuliang seems the stuff of fiction: Her opium-addicted uncle sold her to a brothel at age 14; Pan Zanhua, a customs official, paid her debt and made her his second wife; she studied art in Paris and Rome and became a famous post-Impressionist painter, until her controversial nudes forced her to abandon China for good.

So it isn't surprising that the plot of Jennifer Cody Epstein's debut novel about Yuliang's life, "The Painter from Shanghai," is utterly engrossing. But Epstein's spotless pace, vivid characterization and often breathtaking descriptions elevate the novel above any initial similarities with "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Yuliang's strength and vulnerability, her believable growth throughout the novel into a daring, independent woman and the development of her artist's eye are wholly absorbing, and Pan Zanhua's support of Yuliang — even helping her unbind her feet — is charming and seductive.

The book's intimacy is spellbinding, not because of the romance of the courtesan era when Yuliang "feels like a peach without its skin," but because of Epstein's achievement in resurrecting a passionate woman who pursued a life of her own despite intrinsic barriers.

"Serve the People" by Yan Lianke, translated by Julia Lovell; Black Cat

When is a love story not really about love? When it's in Yan Lianke's cleverly amusing, almost epigrammatic novel "Serve the People!" —about a People's Liberation Army soldier ordered to become sexually involved with his division commander's wife.

Wu Dawang is "an exceptional soldier fixated on promotion" who rises through the ranks to fulfill a promise to his wife and father-in-law and lives to the letter of Maoist ideology, serving the people and minding "what he should do and say — and what he shouldn't." That is, until his superiors say serving the commander and his wife is synonymous with serving the people, and Wu faces an impossible "land mine" of duty that leads to her bed.

Yan's entertaining, farcical plot takes off like a controlled breeze, pausing in the exact places you want it to pause, and moving over events where you don't want to linger. It's impossible not to chuckle throughout, particularly during the scene in which Lu Lian and Wu Dawang destroy Maoist propaganda to prove each is the bigger counterrevolutionary.

Beneath the seamlessly executed, tongue-in-cheek depiction of how the slogan "Serve the People" can be manipulated so that people can serve themselves is a cautionary tale about navigating the blurred lines between reality and fantasy that exist even in today's post-9/11 jingoism.

Read more of Christine Thom-as' reviews at www.literarylotus.com.