![]() ![]() But after a communist student agitator is murdered and suspicion falls on another of Lian’s friends, it is Shao and Sparrow who support Lian as she leaves the convoy to search for her mother. Friendship, even romance, blossoms between Lian and Shao-a love she does not trust because he comes from a background far wealthier than her own. Hu Lian, a scholarship recipient from a single-parent family, encounters Liu Shaoming and his enigmatic former servant, Sparrow Chen, just as the students are starting on their long and difficult journey west. Eager to defend their cultural heritage, the students embrace the task assigned to them: safeguarding an encyclopedia of lore compiled during the early Ming dynasty five hundred years before. ![]() ![]() The novel focuses on a group of university students evacuated from Nanjing as the Japanese army approaches. In The Library of Legends (William Morrow, 2020), Janie Chang draws on family stories and ancient legends to weave a fact-based yet mystical tale about this period in China’s long history. But two years before Hitler’s aggression against Poland set off the conflagration in Europe, imperial Japan occupied China, capturing Shanghai and Nanjing before launching bombing forays westward. ![]() Perhaps in anticipation of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the armistice, or just the reality that the last survivors will not be with us much longer, World War II has dominated the genre of historical fiction for some time. ![]()
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