Michelle
13th July 2006, 11:25
Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor’s wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate façade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor’s son.
Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father and resolves to win the local kite-fighting toumament, to prove that he has the makings of a man. His loyal friend Hassan promises to help him? for he always helps Amir? but this is 1970s Afghanistan and Hassan is merely a low-caste servant who is jeered at in the street, although Amir still feels jealous of his natural courage and the place he holds in his father's heart. But neither of the boys could foresee what would happen to Hassan on the afternoon of the tournament, which was to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return, to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.
The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam
Eliza Peabody is one of those dangerously blameless women who believes she has God in her pocket. She is too enthusiastic; she talks too much. Her concern for the welfare of her wealthySouth London neighbours extends to ingenuous well-meaning notes of unsolicited adviceunder the door. It is just such a one-sided correspondence that heralds Eliza's undoing. Did her letter have something to do with the woman's abrupt disappearance ? Why will no-one else speak of her? And why the watchful, pitying looks and embarassment that now greet her?
To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor’s wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate façade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor’s son.
Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father and resolves to win the local kite-fighting toumament, to prove that he has the makings of a man. His loyal friend Hassan promises to help him? for he always helps Amir? but this is 1970s Afghanistan and Hassan is merely a low-caste servant who is jeered at in the street, although Amir still feels jealous of his natural courage and the place he holds in his father's heart. But neither of the boys could foresee what would happen to Hassan on the afternoon of the tournament, which was to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return, to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.
The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam
Eliza Peabody is one of those dangerously blameless women who believes she has God in her pocket. She is too enthusiastic; she talks too much. Her concern for the welfare of her wealthySouth London neighbours extends to ingenuous well-meaning notes of unsolicited adviceunder the door. It is just such a one-sided correspondence that heralds Eliza's undoing. Did her letter have something to do with the woman's abrupt disappearance ? Why will no-one else speak of her? And why the watchful, pitying looks and embarassment that now greet her?