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''Stories are the only thing that defy death. Stories are truth. I hereby give you mine...' Peking, 1944: Sir Edmund Backhouse is a man of many parts. A polyglot scholar. An effete homosexual. A genius of perversity, a forger, arms salesman, occasional spy and fantasist. Also, if he is to be believed, the onetime lover of the redoubtable Empress Dowager of China, a woman many decades his senior. In his declining years, tended by his friend, Dr Hoeppli, he writes his memoir - 'a wild tale', as he calls it, 'far-fetched and fantastical'- of his affair with the Dowager Empress. Beijing, 2014: Linnie is an Australian woman of uncertain provenance struggling to make a living in Beijing. A Sinophile, a translator of film subtitles, the author of an unpublished novel about Backhouse called The Empress Lover. One day, she receives an intriguingly old-fashioned and formal invitation from a Professor H, an invitation that promises to reveal long hidden secrets of her family... And so two worlds collide. ' (Publication abstract)
Notes
-
Dedication:
For Geremie
and in loving memory of my father
Lewis Jaivin (1923-2013)
-
Epigraph:
Now I do not know whether I was then a man
dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a
butterfly dreaming I am a man.
–Zhuangzi (translated by Yutang)
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful
about what we pretend to be.
–Kurt Vonnegut
I saw lots of fucking tulips, as promised.
–J.D. Salinger, letter to Michael Mitchell about his 1994
European holiday
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
History, Mystery, Romance : Complications in China
A Quest for Identity Finds Its Meaning in China
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 3-4 May 2014; (p. 35) The Age , 3 May 2014; (p. 33)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
Mixing Fact with Fable in a Tall Tale
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 26 April 2014; (p. 21)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
Interview : Linda Jaivin
2014
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 12 -13 April 2014; (p. 30-31) The Canberra Times , 12 April 2014; (p. 19) The Age , 12 April 2014; (p. 30) 'Life is complicated - but that is what gives it frisson for this traveller, translator and writer.' -
So Fuza
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 360 2014; (p. 21)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
The Writer, and Her Place in the Chinese Puzzle
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 5-6 April 2014; (p. 16-17)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel
-
The Writer, and Her Place in the Chinese Puzzle
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 5-6 April 2014; (p. 16-17)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
So Fuza
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 360 2014; (p. 21)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
Mixing Fact with Fable in a Tall Tale
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 26 April 2014; (p. 21)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
History, Mystery, Romance : Complications in China
A Quest for Identity Finds Its Meaning in China
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 3-4 May 2014; (p. 35) The Age , 3 May 2014; (p. 33)
— Review of The Empress Lover 2014 single work novel -
Interview : Linda Jaivin
2014
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 12 -13 April 2014; (p. 30-31) The Canberra Times , 12 April 2014; (p. 19) The Age , 12 April 2014; (p. 30) 'Life is complicated - but that is what gives it frisson for this traveller, translator and writer.' -
Australia’s Queen of Erotica : an Interview with Linda Jaivin
Annalise Bolt
(interviewer),
2014
single work
interview
— Appears in: Lip Magazine 2014;
- Peking,
-
Beijing,
cChina,cEast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
- 1944
- 2014