The internationally bestselling author of PARIS and NEW YORK takes on an exhilarating new world with his trademark epic style in CHINA.

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of readers with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in CHINA, Rutherfurd takes readers into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom.

The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. Along the way, in his signature style, Rutherfurd provides a deeply researched portrait of Chinese history and society, its ancient traditions and great upheavals, and China’s emergence as a rising global power. As always, we are treated to romance and adventure, heroines and scoundrels, grinding struggle and incredible fortunes.

CHINA brings to life the rich terrain of this vast and constantly evolving country. From Shanghai to Nanking to the Great Wall, Rutherfurd chronicles the turbulent rise and fall of empires as the colonial West meets the opulent and complex East in a dramatic struggle between cultures and people.

Extraordinarily researched and majestically told, Edward Rutherfurd paints a thrilling portrait of one of the most singular and remarkable countries in the world.

China is a challenging book, but the more you read the more intriguing it becomes, as the reader is slowly captivated by this strange and complicated nation. The characters, both Chinese and British, are solidly real people with the same human frailties that all people have. We can sympathise with some, dislike others and feel for the downtrodden, as nineteenth century China and Britain vie for superiority. As the twentieth century beckons, both nationalities begin to realise that to have a booming economy between the two nations requires peace and talking, rather than the continual spats of war that were the norm, and this barnstormer of a book can take its rightful place as a true historical epic.