Green Mountain White Cloud / L'éternité n'est pas de trop By François Cheng

I picked up the French version of this in Paris. Written by a Chinese man who was a member of l'academie Francais about love in Ming China it sounded lovely. I got about half way through the French book and then stopped reading it as I had to do uni prep, and then discovered that SOAS had the English translation. I thought I'd read the first half of the English translation to remind myself what happened and then go back to the French and read the rest. What actually happened was I sat down last night and read the whole thing cover to cover!!!

Everything was so lovely! I was already appreciating the story from the French version, but it was so touching and so beautiful. It's like a novel set in Chinese poetry. There are unpleasant things, like rape, kidnappings, and being sold into prostitution but it is such a beautiful portrayal of love and longing. I absolutely devoured it. The only part I wasn't sure about was the Jesuits showing up and their discussion of christian love linking in with the true love of Dao Sheng but even that was ok.

A wonderful read, the English translation is very good, though if you can read the French I'd of course recommend that. (As you can see the French title is much better!) I'm now going back and reading the rest in French.