Book description
China, 1930s. Julian Bell, son of the Bloomsbury set's Vanessa, is newly arrived in Peking. In search of fresh experiences, he encounters the beautiful, intelligent and deeply erotic Lin Cheng. Though Lin is wife to a university professor, their passionate assignations blossom into an affair.
Schooled in the ancient Taoist…
Why read it?
1 author picked K as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Hong Ying’s first novel, Summer of Love, was banned for depicting a sex orgy amidst the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square protests. Almost as provocative, to me, is K: The Art of Love, which plays on the old theme of a wealthy man’s spurned wife, Lin Cheng, with the twist that it’s not the young lover she takes on who liberates her but Lin herself, steeped in Taoist sexual practices, who liberates him with her ferocious passion.
Her lover happens to be historical Julian Bell, son of Vanessa Bell, the sister of Virginia Woolf and member of the…
From Isham's list on novels that immerse you in Chinese history.
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The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
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