The Ten Thousand Things: Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

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In the turbulent final years of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Meng is a low-level bureaucrat, employed by the government of Mongol conquerors established by the Kublai Khan. Though he wonders about his own complicity with this regime, he prefers not to dwell on his official duties, choosing instead to live the life of the mind. Wang is an extraordinarily gifted artist. His paintings are at once delicate and confident; in them, one can see the wind blowing through the trees, the water rushing through rocky valleys, the infinite expanse of China's natural beauty.
WC But this is not a time for sitting still and, as The Ten Thousand Things unfolds, we follow Wang as he travels through an empire in turmoil. In his wanderings, he encounters, among many memorable characters, other master painters of the period, a fierce female warrior known as the White Tigress who will recruit him as a military strategist, and an ugly young Buddhist monk who rises from beggary to extraordinary heights.
In The Ten Thousand Things, John Spurling endows every description - every detail - with the precision and depth that the real-life Wang Meng brought to his painting. But it is also a novel of fated meetings, grand battles and riveting drama, and in its seamless fusion of the epic and the intimate, it deserves to be compared to the classic Chinese novels that partly

Reviews

'Spellbinding... The Ten Thousand Things has the sort of sensual prose that makes the reader purr with delight and is surely destined to be one of the books of the year'Daily Mail

'In this immersive tale of a landscape artist's life, written with restrained lyricism, John Spurling has also given us an entertaining and insightful study about the art of nature, and the nature of art'Tan Twan Eng, author of The Garden of Evening Mists

'A truly remarkable achievement... Dramatic, absorbing, tender and profound... extraordinary and wonderful'Miranda Seymour, author of Noble Endeavours and In My Father's House

'An enormous pleasure from start to finish'Rachel Billington, author of Maria and Emma and Knightley

'This is an extraordinary novel. Spurling brings together his strengths as a dramatist, an art critic and a novelist. It is an impressive combination that gives a tone of authenticity to his absorbing story and adds to its enjoyment. I look forward to the film'Michael Holroyd, author of A Book of Secrets

'I was amazed by The Ten Thousand Things, and by John Spurling's powerful imagination - with ten thousand details, he has brought the ancient Chinese artist Wang Meng to life in beautiful prose'Xinran, author of Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

'Wang Meng is one of the most fascinating figures in Chinese history. In this lucid and brilliant novel, John Spurling uses him as a key character to recreate the end of an empire. A vivid evocation of a turbulent era with echoes of debates today about loyalty, choices and artistic integrity'Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally

Author Bio

John Spurling is the author of the novels The Ragged End, After Zenda and A Book of Liszts. He is a prolific playwright, whose plays have been performed on television, radio and stage, including at the National Theatre. Spurling is a frequent reviewer and was for twelve years the art critic of the New Statesman. He lives in London and Arcadia, Greece, and is married to the biographer Hilary Spurling.