The Painter From Shanghai (2008)

More than a decade after Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden's best-seller still inspires imitators like The Painter From Shanghai. (Even the books' covers — an Asian beauty on a plain background — are similar.) Jennifer Cody Epstein chronicles the rags-to-riches ascent of Pan Yuliang, who's sold into prostitution by her eccentric uncle and bought by Zanhua, a handsome inspector driven by disdain for the ''exploitation of society's vulnerable elements'' in 20th-century China. Too bad this antiquated fable — based on the bio of real-life postimpressionist Yuliang — steeps its subjects in the same hyperbolic stereotypes they seek to escape. C