Forbidden City
A Novel
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4.1 • 15 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong’s protégée and lover—and a heroine of the Cultural Revolution—in this “masterful” (The Washington Post) novel.
“A new classic about China’s Cultural Revolution . . . Think Succession, but add death and mayhem to the palace intrigue. . . . Ambitious and impressive.”—San Francisco Chronicle
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, PopSugar • Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence—a forbidden city unto itself—that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei beelines toward the Chairman.
Mei gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante—and paramour. While he fends off political rivals, Mei faces down schemers from the dance troupe who will stop at nothing to take her place and the Chairman’s imperious wife, who has secret plans of her own.
When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor, but the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.
Forbidden City is an epic yet intimate portrayal of one of the world’s most powerful and least understood leaders during this extraordinarily turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Mei’s harrowing journey toward truth and disillusionment raises questions about power, manipulation, and belief, as seen through the eyes of a passionate teenage girl.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hua's provocative latest (after A River of Stars) follows a bold and shrewd woman as she navigates China's political scene amid the Cultural Revolution. Mei Xiang is almost 16 when she trades a long-kept secret for a place in Chairman Mao's troupe—an excellent opportunity to serve the party's interests while escaping a dull, inevitable life filled with field work and famine. Her ambition and dreams of becoming a model revolutionary help her catch the Chairman's eye and keep him interested long enough to incite the jealousy of the other recruits and even of his wife, long accustomed to turning a blind eye to her husband's many indiscretions. At first, Mei relishes being the Chairman's lover, his confidant, and even his pawn in the schemes he orchestrates to triumph over his political rivals. But eventually, she sees the deceit in their relationship and understands heroes aren't always what they seem ("He had rewritten my history. To be everything to everyone, I'd become no one," she reflects). Hua masterly presents Mei's attempts to leave the Lake Palaces with their "power, secrecy, and isolation" behind as she processes her trauma. This finds a brilliant new perspective on familiar material via its story of a young woman's brush with power. It's magnificent.
