Author:Eileen Chang
In 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime.
Jiazhi’s life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin’s bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him?
A passionate tale of espionage, deception and love, Lust, Caution is accompanied here by four further dazzling short stories by Eileen Chang.
A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale
—— Oscar WildeIt really does turn your blood cold
—— Colm TóibínTechnically, he is extraordinarily brilliant, and stylistically he's wonderful
—— David LodgeHenry James is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry
—— Graham Greene[James] is the most intelligent man of his generation
—— T. S. EliotThe Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient or modern
—— IndependentWe are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves... Henry James...can still make us afraid of the dark
—— Virginia WoolfDark, funny and disturbing
—— London Review of BooksThese 10 inventive stories, set mostly in the Florida Everglades, mix satire and sophisticated whimsy
—— New York TimesKaren Russell has produced an engaging debut. Her ability to integrate mythology and the supernatural with the very contemporary...is reminiscent of Angela Carter, but unlike Carter's many imitators, Russell never descends into whimsy... In St Lucy's, humans, ghosts and animals are utterly real; and Russell sells the genuine article, a seemingly effortless writer
—— Alisa Cox , MslexiaThese are stories that will sneak into the back of your brain and lurk there long after you are finished reading.
—— Global ReviewPoignant and wonderful story...concentrates, without effort, all Malouf's themes...it needs to be read
—— Prospect