Tao
By Aya Goda
Translated by Alison Watts
Portobello Books £8.99, 395 pages
FT Bookshop price: £7.19

While backpacking in Kashgar, Japanese art student Aya Goda is swept off her feet by vagrant pilgrim, “notorious thug”, smuggling kingpin and hot-headed artist Cao Yong. Rocked by the intensity of his paintings, Aya suspends her studies to help Yong realise the risky ambition of exhibiting his radical art in Beijing.