Dynasty: A Novel

Robert Elegant

ene 2017 · The Imperial China Trilogy Libro 3 · Open Road Media

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New York Times Bestseller: An epic of love and adultery, money and power, set amid the revolutionary turbulence of twentieth-century China, from the author of Manchu and Mandarin.

Founder of the Sekloong dynasty of Hong Kong, Sir Jonathan, the illegitimate offspring of an Irish adventurer and his Chinese mistress, overcame colonial prejudice to build a vast and influential trading empire spanning half a century. The marriage of Sir Jonathan’s profligate son Charles to the ambitious and beautiful Mary Osgood comes to embody, on both personal and political levels, the tensions between Orient and Occident, and between Nationalists and Communists fighting for control of postimperial China.
 
Dynasty follows the Sekloongs’ triumphs, tragedies, betrayals, and bloodshed through the decades as they expand and protect their own empire, even as their homeland is torn apart from within by war and ideological upheaval, from the fall of the last emperor to the triumph of Mao Tse-tung. As China turbulently enters the modern world, the Sekloongs also grow in stature and strength—as do their desires and wayward passions.
 
Fluent in Mandarin, author Robert Elegant spent many years in Hong Kong as a journalist and commentator, and has authored many acclaimed books on China. His stirring drama combines vivid writing with a deep understanding of Chinese culture, creating “an action-packed novel . . . conjured up with perception and vigor” (TheNew York Times Book Review).
 

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Robert Elegant was born in New York City in 1928. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania at eighteen and, after voluntary US Army service, studied Japanese and advanced Chinese at Yale and Columbia. In 1951, while he was at Columbia, his first book, China’s Red Masters, was published to wide acclaim. He arrived in Asia as a Pulitzer traveling fellow and became one of the youngest American reporters covering the Korean War, scooping the world in 1953 with his exclusive report that an armistice had been agreed upon.

Elegant’s subsequent career included stints as Asia bureau chief for Newsweek and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Both Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger consulted him personally before Nixon made the decision to go to Beijing and reopen relations with China. He has published seventeen books of both fiction and nonfiction, most centered on China. A recipient of several major press awards, his books have been widely translated and many have become bestsellers; he also won an Edgar Award for a political thriller set in Vietnam. Elegant lives with his wife, Rosemary; shih-tzu dogs; and cats in Umbria, Italy, where he is working on more books; writers, he says, never retire.