I meant to post this last week, but somehow it slipped my mind. . .If you want to learn more about the author and his latest novel, Under Heaven (Canada, USA, Europe), check this National Post article titled "The Lost Dynasty."
Here's a teaser:
He began researching the novel about seven years ago, after reading a book about the Silk Road, the ancient merchant route that connected China with the Mediterranean. In 2004, he gathered a trunk-load of books on the topic and went to France with his family to work on the book, but wound up writing Ysabel. When that novel was finished, he began reading the Tang Dynasty poets after a friend's recommendation, and again was drawn into China's past.
"The Tang Dynasty -- 8th century China -- once you start reading about it, once you start reading the people who inhabited it, and who wrote at that time, it's electrifying," he says. "It's an electrifyingly dramatic, sophisticated, violent, tumultuous, complex period." He mentions some similarly historically important periods: Elizabethan England, Athenian Athens, Renaissance Florence, Peter the Great's Russia. "Tang Dynasty China may be at the apex of all of those."
You can read the entire article here.
1 commentaires:
I had never read Mr. Kay prior to reading your write up a couple of weeks ago on Under Heaven. I went out the following day and checked out Ysabel from the library.
It was a fascinating read. Part history and part love story and all spanning 2500 years. I've already placed The Summer Tree on hold at the library. :)
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