RED CHAMBER,THE - Virago

?Daiyu feels the pace of the sedan bearers slow and presses her nose against the window to see a towering triple gate with crimson pillars, flanked by two massive stone lions, ?It's a strange household,? Uncle Zheng says.?

In this wonderful re-imagining of a Chinese classic set against the breathtaking backdrop of eighteenth-century Beijing, the lives of three unforgettable women collide in the inner chambers of the Jia mansion.

When orphaned Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to take shelter with her cousins in the capital, she drawn into a world of opulent splendour, presided over by the ruthless, scheming Xifeng and the prim, repressed Baochai.

In this dazzling debut, Pauline Chen takes the reader deep into the secret, exquisite world of the women's quarters of an aristocratic household, where the burnish of wealth and refinement mask a harsher truth: marriageable girls are traded like chattel for the family's advancement, and to choose to love is to risk everything. Daiyu learns their secrets and finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and hidden passions, from the petty gossip of the servants? quarters to that of the Imperial Palace. When a political coup overthrows the emperor and plunges the once-mighty family into grinding poverty, each woman must fight for survival.