This epic novel is set against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese war, from the time Japan annexed Manchuria in the early 1930s until the end of the Second World War. During these years, a militaristic Japan pursued an aggressive dream to colonize not only China but also the whole of Southeast Asia and beyond. The brutal sacking of Chiang Kai-shek’s new capital, Nanking, which refused to surrender to the Imperial Army, was a graphic example of Japanese retribution in a war of punishment.
The story of these tumultuous years is told through the lives of a disparate group of fictional characters: a young Russian woman émigré caught between her complex love affair with a British journalist and a liberal-minded Japanese diplomat, an Indian nationalist working for Japanese intelligence, a Chinese professor with communist sympathies, an American missionary doctor and a Japanese soldier, who are all brought together by the monstrous dislocation of war. Enmeshed in a savage world beyond their control, each character turns to the deepest part of themselves to find a way to survive.
© 2016 by Meira Chand. Published in paper format in Singapore by Marshall Cavendish International Asia, recorded by Storyside 2020.
© 2020 Storyside (Audiobook): 9789178897667
© 2019 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) (Ebook): 9789814828895
Release date
Audiobook: 6 April 2020
Ebook: 8 April 2019
This epic novel is set against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese war, from the time Japan annexed Manchuria in the early 1930s until the end of the Second World War. During these years, a militaristic Japan pursued an aggressive dream to colonize not only China but also the whole of Southeast Asia and beyond. The brutal sacking of Chiang Kai-shek’s new capital, Nanking, which refused to surrender to the Imperial Army, was a graphic example of Japanese retribution in a war of punishment.
The story of these tumultuous years is told through the lives of a disparate group of fictional characters: a young Russian woman émigré caught between her complex love affair with a British journalist and a liberal-minded Japanese diplomat, an Indian nationalist working for Japanese intelligence, a Chinese professor with communist sympathies, an American missionary doctor and a Japanese soldier, who are all brought together by the monstrous dislocation of war. Enmeshed in a savage world beyond their control, each character turns to the deepest part of themselves to find a way to survive.
© 2016 by Meira Chand. Published in paper format in Singapore by Marshall Cavendish International Asia, recorded by Storyside 2020.
© 2020 Storyside (Audiobook): 9789178897667
© 2019 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) (Ebook): 9789814828895
Release date
Audiobook: 6 April 2020
Ebook: 8 April 2019
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Overall rating based on 3 ratings
Sad
Thought-provoking
Informative
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Tania
21 Nov 2023
This is a hard book and not a fun read, but Chand gives a voice to many different sides of the rape of Nanking and lets each character interpret events in their own way. Plus she’s not gratuitous about the really horrible stuff. The book is about respecting the past enough to present it in an unsensational way, that the reader has the opportunity to form an opinion.
English
Singapore