Oracle Bone: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Life in seventh-century China teems with magic, fox spirits, and demons; there is a fervent belief that the extraordinary resides within the lives of both commoners and royalty. During the years when the empress Wu Zhao gains ascendancy in the Tang court, her evil-minded lover Xie becomes obsessed with finding and possessing the oracle bone, a magical object that will bestow immortal powers on him. Standing in his way is Qilan, an eccentric Daoist nun who rescues an orphaned girl named Ling from being sold into slavery; Qilan takes her under her wing, promising to train her so she may avenge her parents' murders. In another part of the city, a young monk named Harelip questions his faith and his attraction to other men as he helps the elder monk Xuanzang to complete his translation of the Heart Sutra, the sacred Buddhist scripture. Meanwhile, as the mysteries and powers of the missing oracle bone are revealed, it remains to be seen whether Qilan will be able to stop Xie from gaining possession of the magical bone, and at what cost.

This extraordinary magic-realist novel by Singapore-born author Lydia Kwa employs and subverts traditional tropes of Chinese mythology to tell a tale of greed, faith, and female empowerment with a wickedly modern sensibility.

Reviews

A beautiful and moving dream of old Chang'an, deliciously and fully conceived. Wide-awake to Chinese imperial history, traditional storytelling, kung-fu movies, and TCM, this novel is a must-read from a brilliant contemporary novelist. --Larissa Lai, author of When Fox is a Thousand and Salt Fish Girl

In Oracle Bone, Lydia Kwa creates a transfixing narrative that bears the intimate familiarity of a dream with the grandeur of a historical epic. Her prose has the precision of fine embroidery, honing in on small moments and making delicate connections to deliver a wondrous world where magic is possible. --Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun

Collating a narrative of love, magic, power, and tradition Kwa performs an oracular story divining her way through a supernatural world of hybrid animas and shapeshifters to reveal adjacent truths of consciousness we usually only intuit. Oracle Bone is a poignant reminder that the imagination is real and its stories are crucial to an understanding of how we desire our world. --Fred Wah, Canada's former Parliamentary Poet Laureate

Author Bio

Lydia Kwa: Lydia Kwa is a writer and psychologist. She is the author of the novels This Place Called Absence (Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award finalist), The Walking Boy (Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize finalist), and Pulse, as well as two books of poetry, The Colours of Heroines and sinuous.