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the book shows its age: the guy is your prototype orientalist white scholar-cum-adventurer and no surprise some claims float around that Indiana Jones is based on this character. Thrill seeking, entitled, opinionated and racist AF yet the whole way through he manages to write well enough for me to feel I don’t want to put the book down. I keep thinking that if he gets himself killed when his disguise falls through, he’d bloody well deserved it for lack of respect to other cultures he claims to study, and yet I feel the tension each time he gets into a sticky situation. No indication at the end he paid his servants (enough) for what they had to put up with, or what happened to them when he returned to India!

Ongelooflijk mooie zinnen, waarmee de auteur een heel specifieke sfeer in het naoorlogse Vlaanderen weet op te roepen, en ook spanning opbouwt. Ik had constant mijn grootouders voor ogen (die een andere ervaring hadden van WWII), en hoe het dorpsleven er aantoe ging gebaseerd op de verhalen die ik hoorde.

Heel veel blijft open voor de fantasie van de lezer, net zoals ik het graag heb, en toch is er een afgerond einde.

I read this when I started my Chinese Studies degree many years ago, used a few chapters in teaching, re-read the whole first volume (this one) a few years back and just keep being floored by the quality of the writing and translation. Best novel ever? Happy to give it this accolade if it gets you reading the thing. Four more volumes of thickening plot after this one!

And figure out how to make the world a better place. Srsly. Bonus: you’ll be more creative and you’ll have a better memory, too. Just go with the flow and trust the author as you follow down the rabbit hole.

If you like Seth’s earlier work, you’ll like this too. If you don’t, then maybe what he’s doing is not for you? (and if that doesn’t ring a bell, check out the book and learn what that’s all about 😉)

“Cosy mystery” — at least in my classification: lots of humanity shining through, lovely slow pace to get us going, and some medieval history thrown in.

Great book! A fab story, “coming of age” in a way but a very select episode in the author’s life and I imagine it can’t have been easy to write and draw this one. The drawings alternate “basic” with absolutely fascinatingly detailed ones that show Travis observes his surroundings very very carefully.

Interesting premise but could get a bit wordy at times and once i read all three I couldn’t help but think back to the implied/embedded nationalism and misogyny. Or how being a historian of China ruins everything 😅