Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling wrote fiction for children, even when writing for adults. That's the British Empire for you - a nation of posturing preteens, too caught up in their narratives to guess the audacity of their undertaking, too callous and amoral to consider the harm. The same might apply to all empire builders, sometimes literal children, all the same, successful species of stupid presently filling mass graves in Iraq and Syria and Libya.

Ubik by Philip K Dick

Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac

Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia by Alexander Cooley

White Teeth by Zadie Smith