In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient, Janice Y.K. Lee's debut novel is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong.
In 1942, Englishman Will Truesdale, an Englishman newly arrived in Hong Kong, falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong to work as a piano teacher and also begins a fateful affair. As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine, impossible choices emerge-between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and above all, the past.
Editorial Reviews
"A rare and exquisite story...Transports you out of time, out of place, into a world you can feel on your very skin." —Elizabeth Gilbert
"Evocative, poignant, and skillfully crafted, The Piano Teacheris more than an epic tale of war and a tangled, tortured love story. It is the kind of novel one consumes in great, greedy gulps, pausing (grudgingly) only when absolutely necessary. . . . If we measure the skill of a fiction writer by her ability to create characters and atmosphere so effortlessly real, so alive on the page, that the reader feels a sense of participatory anxiety—as if the act of reading gives one the power to somehow influence the outcome of purely imaginary events—then Lee should be counted among the very best in recent memory." —Chicago Tribune
"Lee unfolds the story with the brisk grace and discretion of the society she describes." —The New Yorker
"The novel is sustained by elegant prose and a terrific sense of place. As Graham Greene evoked Vietnam in The Quiet American, Lee, born and raised in Hong Kong long after the war, captures the city as it was during World War II, its glittering veneer barely masking the panic and corruption beneath." —The Miami Herald
About the Author
Janice Y. K. Lee was born and raised in Hong Kong and graduated from Harvard College. A former features editor at Elleand Mirabellamagazines, she currently lives in Hong Kong with her husband and children.
