However, my favourite sections of the book were those narrated by ‘Lacquer Nail’, a eunuch in the service of the Empress Dowager Cixi. In a novel of this length, it was inevitable that I would find some parts much more interesting than others – for example, the chapters involving Nio’s adopted sister Mei-Ling who makes the decision to have her little girl’s feet bound while her husband is in America working on the railroads were particularly compelling.

These characters and their families appear again and again throughout the novel as the years go by and they are drawn into other key events such as the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Uprising. This range of viewpoints helps to build a full picture of the events leading to the Opium Wars and what happens in the aftermath. At nearly 800 pages, that decision to concentrate only on one century allows for more character development and more time spent exploring each historical event or incident in detail.īeginning in 1839, the first few sections of the novel deal with the First Opium War, taking us through the complicated background to this conflict from the perspectives of several different characters: Shi-Rong, secretary to Commissioner Lin, the man responsible for trying to end the illegal import of opium into China John Trader, a British merchant who has become involved in the opium trade to improve his financial situation so that he can marry the woman he loves Nio, a Chinese pirate and opium smuggler and John’s cousin Cecil Whiteparish, who is a missionary. It’s slightly different from his earlier novels – all of which I have read and enjoyed – because whereas those previous books follow the history of a country, city or region over a period of many centuries, this one covers a much shorter period, telling the story of China in the 19th century. I loved this! It’s been a long time since Edward Rutherfurd’s last novel was published ( Paris in 2013), but China is so good I think it’s definitely been worth the wait.

China rutherfurd review