Monday, October 11

The Ghosts of Sin-Chang

I finished reading Albert Gervais' The Ghosts of Sin-Chang (Ombre du ma-koui) translated from the French by Vyvyan Holland. Gervais was apparently a francophone doctor who lived in China in the early twentieth century. One incident concerns one of the characters who is visited by a servant from the family next door, but he later discovers there is no such family, which is something right out of Pu Songling. On the other hand, the same man has a couple of Chinese girls as his lovers, and the novelist says they aren't jealous of each other. Likely story. And of course, it's somewhat racist, but he gets enough things right that it's not a bad read.

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