The Lost Daughter of Happiness - Softcover

Yan, Geling

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571207316 ISBN 13: 9780571207312

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2001

Synopsis

Narrated in a haunting voice that mulls over painful truths of the past, this is an unflinching, erotic tale of forbidden love in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. Fusang is a Chinese girl who is shanghaied from her village and brought to San Francisco, where she enters a seedy underworld.

About this title

Review

'The lush, decadent darkness which pervades Geling Yan's novel about a Chinese prostitute in turn-of-the-century San Francisco makes this an intensely cinematic book.' Big Issue; 'Her great storytelling lets you enjoy silk and embroidery, tea and angling, earrings, everlasting love and derringdo; it lets you, with the luscious vicarious masochism of a true fiction lover, relish the horrors of giving your body to hideous strangers or, as a coolie railroad worker, being beaten to a pulp by striking Caucasian workers.' Observer; 'A challenging work of literature... Skilfully subverts the basic tenet of Orientalism - that the Orient can be read, known, possessed.' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Born in Shanghai to a writer and an actress, Geling Yan began writing in the late 1970s as a war correspondent covering the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts. Her first novel was published in China in 1985. In 1989, following the massacre at Tiananmen Square, she left China for the United States. Since then, two of her works have been made into films and a collection of her short fiction was translated into English. She has won many awards, both in China and the USA. She now lives in San Francisco.$$$

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0571207316
• ISBN 13: 9780571207312
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400