Peony is the cherished only child of the first wife of a wealthy Chinese nobleman. Yet she is betrothed to a man she has never met and as her sixteenth birthday approaches, she has spoken to no man other than her father and never ventured outside the cloistered women's quarters of the Chen Family Villa. She is trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage and the romantic lyrics from the Chinese classic novel The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own. Her father engages a small theatrical troupe to perform scenes from the epic opera of The Peony Pavilion - a live spectacle that few women have ever seen - in their garden amidst the scent of ginger, green tea and jasmine. Peony's mother is against the production: "Unmarried girls should not be seen in public." But Peony's father prevails. Women will watch the opera from behind a screen to hide them from view and through a crack, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave and is immediately bewitched by him.
So begins Peony's journey of love, desire and sorrow as Lisa See's haunting new novel takes readers back to seventeenth-century China and into the heart and soul of an unforgettable heroine.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Praise for SNOWFLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN: 'Lisa See has written her best book yet achingly beautiful, a marvel of imagination of a real and secret world that has only recently disappeared.' Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club 'Only the best novelists can do what Lisa See has done, to bring to life not only a character but an entire culture, and a sensibility so strikingly different from our own engrossing and completely convincing.' Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha 'This novel is an epic journey, as exciting and believable as it is thrillingly original.' Sunday Express 'The wonder of this book is that it takes readers to a place at once foreign and familiar Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a triumph on every level, a beautiful, heartbreaking story.' Washington Post
Auflage
Sprache
Verlagsort
Maße
Höhe: 23.4 cm
Breite: 15.3 cm
ISBN-13
978-0-7475-8248-9 (9780747582489)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Lisa See is the author of the best-selling Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net, The Interior and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. The Organization of Chinese American Women named her the 2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in Los Angeles.
