Rutherfurd, E: China
Rutherfurd, E: China
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Description
China, the Nineteenth Century: a vast, ancient empire closed to foreigners.
Opium is the key to open its borders: it will buy silver and this in turn will buy tea. Western adventurers like John Trader make a fortune as the Empire sinks beneath a miasma of addiction, war, rebellion and tragedy.
This is an unforgettable, sweeping tale of nineteenth-century China told from both sides of the divide: of Mei-Ling, the humble village woman who will become a mandarin's concubine; the Empress Dowager Cixi who seizes the throne as weak Emperors crumble before the foreigners; Lacquer Nail, the eunuch who adores her but will see his beloved Summer Palace burned; Guanji the scourge of the Taiping revolt as it rages across the great river valleys and cities of the endless land; Shi-Rong whose Confucian ideals are snuffed out and then reignited in the cauldron.
And, at the last, as the century dies, the Boxers rise with their insatiable hatred of the foreign imperialists. And now, at the end of his life, John Trader returns to Beijing. It's time to redress the wrongs of the past and, perhaps, to save the last person dear to him.
Edward Rutherfurd was born in England, in the cathedral city of Salisbury. Educated at the universities of Cambridge, and Stanford, California, he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. After numerous attempts to write books and plays, he finally abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983, and returned to his childhood home to write SARUM, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge, and Salisbury. Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international bestseller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he has written seven more bestsellers.