Christine Frick-Gerke Boeken

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, the narrative intertwines the fates of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future. Beautiful and destructive, May escapes an arranged marriage in rural nineteenth-century China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where she meets Arthur, an Australian drawn into one scrape after another through his philanthropic pursuits. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur seeks to rehabilitate May, only to find himself helplessly seduced by her bound feet. Reforming her proves impossible, so love-struck Arthur marries her and brings her home to live with his family. In Alice, his daughter, May sees the possibility of redemption, while Alice turns to May for the love her own mother withholds. However, when Alice is caught preparing her aunt's opium pipe, she is sent to a London boarding school, far from May's influence. The story unfolds amid stunning beauty and cruelty, in a lawless place where traditions clash, and tragedy looms over a world built on unsettled waters. By turns shocking, exquisite, and hilarious, this work is a spellbinding literary triumph.

Ein buntes Kapitel britischer Kulturgeschichte im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert: Junge Maler, Literaten und Intellektuelle im Londoner Stadtteil Bloomsbury erproben neue Formen der Kunst und des Lebens jenseits aller Konventionen. Texte von Mitgliedern dieses Kreises und über sie, alle zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung, führen in die Beziehungs- und Ideenwelt der »Bloomsberries«.