The Jade Stalk by Jonathan Fast (1988)

The Jade Stalk
by Jonathan Fast
Publisher:  E. P. Dutton
Copyright:  1988
Book Club Edition

The Empress Wu Tse-t'ien was the most powerful woman who ever lived, and the T'ang dynasty over which she presided was the period of Chinese history in which poetry and the arts flourished as never before.  The empress, as cruel as she was powerful, ruled this pageant of splendors with an iron hand, and so rendered China the greatest empire on earth.

The Empress Wu was a tactical genius.  She was ruthless.  She was innovative.  She was also passionate.

When the reign of the empress was at its height, her dutiful daughter, the princess T'ai-p'ing, bestowed upon her mother a special gift, the Boxer, a man of "outstanding ability."  And the empress shocked Mandarin society by taking of her lover a common peasant, an illiterate street brawler and seller of herbs, a man with only one immeasurable gift -- the gift of pleasing a woman.

Against a vividly realistic world of political infighting between Confucian and Buddhist factions, their story of pleasure and passion unfolds.  While the Boxer can never please the court politically, he can never displease the empress physically.  So a lyrical devotion of flesh and spirit threatens the very foundation of an extraordinary society in this exquisite novel of desire and history.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover is lightly discolored and edges are rubbed. Pages may be tanning from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper.

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