Jonathan Mirsky

A Sorority of Character

Four Sisters of Hofei

By

Bloomsbury 310pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

THIS WONDERFUL BOOK, elegiac, poignant, and recreative of a lost world, came to me after a year of reading bad novels about China by Chinese women: cheap, sensationalist, thrill-seeking – books without merit, peddled by publishers panting for profit from something, anything, Chinese-y.

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