Blogs in February 2024

River East, River West 15th February 2024

A darkly glittering debut that traces a mixed family’s troubled trajectory through developing China. Shanghai, 2007: feeling betrayed by her American mother’s engagement to their rich landlord Lu Fang, fourteen-year-old Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American...

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On Borrowed Time 18th November 2023

e On Borrowed Time is set in Hong Kong and Shanghai over the period 1996/1997 – including the handover of Hong Kong to China. The novel explores the choices that people have to make; in particular between doing what...

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Lady Tan’s Circle of Women 31st October 2023

In 15th-century China two women are born under the same sign, the Metal Snake. But life will take the friends on very different paths. According to Confucius, ‘an educated woman is a worthless woman’, but Tan Yunxian – born...

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The Book of Beijing: Reading The City 25th October 2023

Bringing together fiction from celebrated writers, The Book of Beijing is an anthology of short stories charting the social and and cultural change of Beijing over the last fifty years, creating a literary map of the city.

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The Fox Wife 17th October 2023

Manchuria, 1908: A young woman is found frozen in the snow. Her death is clouded by rumours of foxes, believed to lure people into peril by transforming into beautiful women and men. Bao, a detective with a reputation for...

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