Horizon Information Portal

e-branch

Home

My Account/Renew Loans

Find Magazine Articles & more

The palace of heavenly pleasure / Adam Williams.

by Williams, Adam, 1953-

View full image

Thomas Dunne Books, c2004.

Prostitutes -- Fiction.

China -- History -- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901 -- Fiction.

624 p. ; 25 cm.

"Saga centers on the Boxer Rebellion, a peasant uprising against the foreign colonization of China in 1900. More specifically, it follows the sensuously detailed love affair between Henry Manners, a Victorian secret agent, and Helen Frances Delamere, a convent-educated daughter of a local British soap merchant in the invented northern Chinese city of Shishan. The rest of the massive cast is headed by Dr. Edward Airton, a Scottish physician, who runs a hospital and mission in the city. Airton has become a philosophical sparring partner to the Mandarin, a local magistrate who holds absolute power. Airton's family and friends round out the foreign presence, and a host of Chinese characters bridge the cultural gap. The villains of the piece, apart from the bloodthirsty Boxers, are Mother Liu, madam of the exclusive brothel that gives the volume its title, and her sadistic son, Ren Ren. As the rebellion develops from dubious rumor to frightening fact, the Westerners in Shishan are forced to place themselves in Manners's intrepid but amoral hands."--Publisher's Weekly.

Historical fiction.

Horizon Information Portal 3.24_8902M

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal