2 Chinese culture fiction bargains from Open Road Media for $1.99 each, couponable @ Kobo where I picked them up (and thus, linkage provided there, but will be price-matched at other stores if you have a preference):
Golden Lilies by Kwei Li, a noblewoman of the 19th century, supposedly originally translated by Elizabeth Cooper, and edited by popular women's fiction novelist Eileen Goudge, with art by Zhang Qing. This is a revamped version of a public domain book,
My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard, from 1914, which can be found @
Project Gutenberg, but Goudge has made minor updates to the text for modern readers and commissioned a new set of woodcut illustrations from a modern Chinese artist working in the traditional style, as well as providing an introduction with as much as can be recounted about Kwei Li's real life (apparently there's some doubt as to whether the letters this is translated from really existed, or Cooper was just writing epistolary historical fiction without disclosing it to anyone).
This is on sale just through Oct 7th, according to the Open Road newsletter.
Century-old letters tell a story of timeless love in a vanished country
First translated by American scholar Elizabeth Cooper in 1914 and published as My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard, this haunting collection of letters was out of print until discovered by bestselling author Eileen Goudge. In its pages she found the story of Kwei-li, a noblewoman of nineteenth-century China.
In rich, elegant detail, Kwei-li writes of passionate love for a man whom she first meets on their wedding day. She navigates the difficulties of homemaking and motherhood, becoming a confident wife as her happy home is threatened by the forces of change that are sweeping the nation. Enhanced with beautiful new illustrations, this is a timeless chronicle of a strong woman’s struggle against the onset of modernity.
Peony: A Novel of China by Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck (
Wikipedia), historical literary fiction about a Chinese girl who goes to work as a servant for a Jewish family in Kaifeng, originally out in 1948.
The Nobel Prize–winning author’s perceptive fable of cross-cultural passions in nineteenth-century China
In 1850s China, a young girl, Peony, is sold to work as a bondmaid for a rich Jewish family in Kaifeng. Jews have lived for centuries in this region of the country, but by the mid-nineteenth century, assimilation has begun taking its toll on their small enclave. When Peony and the family’s son, David, grow up and fall in love with one another, they face strong opposition from every side. Tradition forbids the marriage, and the family already has a rabbi’s daughter in mind for David.
Long celebrated for its subtle and even-handed treatment of colliding traditions, Peony is an engaging coming-of-age story about love, identity, and the tragedy and beauty found at the intersection of two disparate cultures.
This one comes with added historical notes in the back and one of ORM's standard illustrated author biographies.
There's another Pearl S. Buck title on sale for $1.99 as well, this one a then-contemporary plain literary fiction:
This Proud Heart: A Novel, originally out in 1938.
As her second marriage approaches, a brilliant and independent sculptor faces tensions between her art and everyday life
This Proud Heart narrates the experience of a gifted sculptor and her struggle to reconcile her absorbing career with society’s domestic expectations. Susan Gaylord is talented, loving, equipped with a strong moral sense, and adept at anything she puts her hand to, from housework to playing the piano to working with marble and clay. But the intensity of her artistic calling comes at a price, isolating her from other people—at times, even from her own family. When her husband dies and she remarries, she finds herself once again comparing the sacrifice of solitude to that of commitment. With a heroine who is naturalistic yet compellingly larger than life, This Proud Heart is incomparable in its sympathetic study of character.
Both of the Buck novels have been discounted since the beginning of October, though I've no idea how long they'll stay on sale, so I'll probably be picking up TPH Real Soon Now as long as I don't end up disliking the writing in Peony for some reason or other.