The Three-Body Problem

Set during China's Cultural Revolution, the novel by Chinese hard science fiction writer Cixin Liu follows astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, a political outcast who sees her father beaten to death at a struggle session. First sentenced to a labor camp, she is later recruited to Red Coast, a secret military project that searches for life beyond Earth and tries to make contact with it. Her work there sets the story in motion. The title borrows a classic problem from orbital mechanics. It opens the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy and received China's Galaxy Award for science fiction, and Ken Liu's English translation made it the first Hugo winner for Best Novel by an Asian writer.

Mark Zuckerberg picked the Chinese science fiction novel as a fun break from the economics and social science he had been reading, and Evernote chief executive Phil Libin called the trilogy perhaps his favorite science fiction after Dune. It also appears on a list of every book Barack Obama recommended during his presidency.