Dragon Bones
A Novel
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan combines ancient myth with contemporary anxieties of religious fanaticism and terrorism to tell “an absorbing story” (The San Diego Union-Tribune) of love, betrayal, history, ecology, greed—and gory murder.
“Stays with you long after the conventional thriller is forgotten.”—The Washington Post Book World
Liu Hulan, an inspector for China’s Ministry of Public Security, and her American husband, attorney David Stark, are traveling to one of the most beautiful places on earth: the Three Gorges, where China’s biggest engineering project since the building of the Great Wall is taking place.
Hulan is there to investigate the death of an American archaeologist found floating in the waters of the Yangzi River; David is trying to figure out who’s stealing artifacts from Site 518 and selling them on the international art market. Haunting the investigation is the possibility that an artifact has been found that could very well alter the history of civilization. Together, David and Hulan unearth more scandals, confront more murderers, and revive tragic memories that shake their tormented marriage to its core as they struggle to solve a mystery as big, unruly, and complex as China itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The controversial construction of a massive dam on the Yangzi River is the backdrop for the latest adventures of Liu Hulan, inspector in the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing, and her husband, American lawyer David Stark, familiar to readers of Flower Net and The Interior. Many years in construction, the Three Gorges Dam will benefit millions of people, but it will also bury untold archeological wealth. At the start of this complex, atmospheric thriller, Hulan is emotionally estranged from David after their young daughter's death from meningitis, for which she blames herself. Officially, she is scrutinizing a reactionary cult, the All-Patriotic Society, when she is sent to investigate the murder by drowning of a young American archeologist, a man who may have stolen ancient artifacts from the dam site. David accompanies her and they begin to repair their relationship, but the body count mounts and the sinister All-Patriotic Society leader, Xiao Da, rallies his followers against the dam. The tension reaches the breaking point at an auction in Hong Kong at which the most precious artifacts are offered for sale; soon after, Hulan and David are fighting for their lives in dark, slimy-walled caves alongside the Yangzi. The melodramatic conclusion has none of the elegance of the prologue, which casually but exquisitely notes the progress of the archeologist's decaying body along the river, through narrows and bays beyond the magnificent gorges. But See succeeds in widening the reader's knowledge about the politics and culture of contemporary China while racing along with an absorbing story.
