The Empress Lover

(Paperback)

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A witty, playful, intriguing and ultimately very moving novel of identity and loss.

'Stories are the only thing that defy death. Stories are truth. I hereby give you mine...' Peking, 1944: Sir Edmund Backhouse is a man of many parts. A polyglot scholar. An effete homosexual. A genius of perversity, a forger, arms salesman, occasional spy and fantasist. Also, if he is to be believed, the onetime lover of the redoubtable Empress Dowager of China, a woman many decades his senior. In his declining years, tended by his friend, Dr Hoeppli, he writes his memoir - 'a wild tale', as he calls it, 'far-fetched and fantastical'- of his affair with the Dowager Empress. Beijing, 2014: Linnie is an Australian woman of uncertain provenance struggling to make a living in Beijing. A Sinophile, a translator of film subtitles, the author of an unpublished novel about Backhouse called the Empress Lover. One day, she receives an intriguingly old-fashioned and formal invitation from a Professor H, an invitation that promises to reveal long hidden secrets of her family... And so two worlds collide. An enchantingly slippery, sinuous, playful - and ultimately very moving - novel of love, loss, identity and history from one of Australia's finest novelists. 'Jaivin's writing shines and burns.' Sunday Age

'the Empress Lover is a fascinating work, infused as it is with China's history, Jaivin's experience of it, and her own capacious imagination. Surely this is the novel to gain her a reputation as one of Australia'sbest and most versatile writers.' Sydney Morning Herald

'A supple and intricate piece of storytelling ... a touching,inventive and gratifyingly unpredictable novel.' the Australian

Reviews

'Jaivin's writing shines and burns.' - Sunday Age

Author Bio

Linda Jaivin is the internationally published author of nine books, seven fiction and two non-fiction. Her first novel, Eat Me, was a bst-seller in both Australia and overseas. Her fifth novel, The Infernal Optimist, was short-listed for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and has been optioned for a feature film. The Empress Lover is her seventh novel. Linda is also the author of numerous published short stories and essays, including Quarterly Essay 52: Found in Translation: In Praise of a Plural World. She has also written for the theatre and is a literary and film translator from Chinese.