20th Century history suggestions, please?

[Whathappenedtothelego]

Fiction or non-fiction suggestions would be most welcome.

Ideally books dealing with outside Western Europe.

I'm particularly interested in the USSR and Eastern bloc countries, and Asia.

I've recently read and really enjoyed Indian Summer about Indian partition/independence;

1983 The World at the Brink, about the Cold War,

HhhH about a wartime Czechoslovakian assassination plot.

And a handful of Cold War spy thrillers.

Don't want anything too dry, but don't really know where to start looking when I can't browse the shelves in the library.

Red Love
Black Earth City
Stasiland
Wild Swans
A Suitable Boy
God of Small Things
Red Notice - Bill Browder

Nothing to Envy- North Korea, some history to modern day.
Red fortress- Catherine merrivale (about the Kremlin)

The Century Trilogy by Ken Follet might fit the bill.
Fall of Giants - starts at the outbreak of WW1, follows four or five families on both sides. Winter of the World is set in WW2 and follows the same families a generation later. Edge of Eternity is set in the Cold War.

If you want to include the USA try John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

Natasha’s Dance and A People’s Tragedy, Orlando Figes
Gulag, Anne Applebaum

All Russia.

Salonica, Mark Mazower
Midnight at the Pera Palace, Charles King

Coolie Woman, Gaiutra Bahadur - about Indian indenture in Guyana. One of the best books I have read in the last 10 years. Written by a journalist and predicated in her own family history.

All non-fiction.

Sorry my list is Russia heavy but I’ve just been reminded by the poster above.

Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale
comrade Pavlik, Catriona Kelly

The Siege and The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore- a fantastic set of novels set in Stalinist Russia.

Another vote for Wild Swans

Wow, thanks for all these, brilliant!

A few I have already read, but most I hadn't heard of.

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn, non fiction, and Mila 18 by Leon Uris, set in Warsaw around WWII.

Hiroshima by John Hersey

The Poisonwood Bible - set in 1950s Congo during independence from Belgium.

A Gentleman in Moscow - for Russia, 1922 onwards
Memoirs of a Geisha - Kyoto and Japan in the 1930s
(Two of my favourite books of all time)

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. There are two other books loosely linked, a magical realist version of Chilean history.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the Biafran war in Nigeria.

I've just bought Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi which is a acerbic memoir about the 1918 revolution. Looks good, think it was a book at bedtime a few years ago.

Laurie graham 'the grand duchess of nowhere' - a fictional take on the Russian revolution