Chinese Intelligence uncovers a North Korean trying to sell a nuclear device. Then they find five other dealers trying to do the same. The buyer is the same in every case--the Pashtuns.
Is this a "Pashtun Spring"? A realignment of geopolitical power in Central Asia? A resurgence of Islamist terrorism?
In order to anticipate and confront these threats, Spymaster Wang must negotiate through bureaucratic rivalries, as well as personal ambitions, at home and abroad. He reaches for ancient insight into strategies and unorthodox alliances. But the struggle he must undertake cannot cease, and the outcome always remains in doubt.
The Spymaster must also confront a vendetta within the Party as well as the determination of his Old Friends and their wives to make him a "match."
COMMENTS FROM EARLY READERS:
“… the rare feat of a convincing description of hand to hand combat together with a very skillful development of plot and background.” A. G. Chaudri.
“This is fascinating, a true Smiley for current times and troubles, with the added, exotic allure to Western readers of the mystique that is China. It has all the hallmarks of a literary thriller.” Kay Christine Fenton.
“A complex story … so vivid, lifelike and realistic.” Charles Knightley, Author.
A double homicide, a "reluctant" corpse, a bride poisoned on her wedding night--all taking place in a small county, one of fifteen hundred in Tang dynasty China, and all demanding investigation and judicial response within a month!
Judge Dee deals with these cases with his usual investigators and with his customary aplomb, even though he is himself under investigation by an Imperial Censor. He is unorthodox in his choice of investigators (former bandits and a female ex-cat burglar) and one of his suspects is a voluptuous woman who alleges harassment on the part of the authorities. He may also have stepped on some toes of the local gentry.
What is an upright civil servant to do?
HEAVEN IS HIGH and THE EMPEROR FAR AWAY
This is the story of Shopkeeper Wang and the friends, the regulars, and the transients who visit the Yutai (Abundant Peace) Teahouse, a Beijing neighborhood institution, during the decades of the early twentieth century. The setting is intimate and the atmosphere, action and themes, Dickensian. The play is adapted from Teahouse by Lao She (Shu Qingchun) Chinese original published in 1957. The original has been reduced from three acts, set over fifty years, with nearly seventy characters to a play in two acts set about twenty-five years apart with a cast of twenty (some multiple casting). It tries to reproduce as much as possible the characters and actions that Lao She created for a world of those living at the bottom edge of civility and into which corruption and exploitation roughly intrude. This is a world of the poor caught up in the spin-cycle of world historical change.
THE BATTLE on AMAZON
Long ago, along a stretch of a river deep and wide but far away from the consciousness or imagination of anyone outside All under Heaven, a battle was fought that determined the fate of its people for the next four hundred years.
The Battle of Chibi vividly retells selections (translated by the author) from the great Chinese classic, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This novel combines fascinating characters in action as well as ideas in conflict and battle scenes, deception, and earnest debate; there is even a marriage arranged for the purpose of entrapping of the Loyalist leader.
It weaves together stories, drama, poetry--events and episodes that have engrossed Asian readers and listeners for the last seventeen hundred years. Above all, the warriors and leaders in this retelling, their loyalties and conflicts, show why this classic has been valued as the best introduction to Chinese thought
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