Perfection She Dances

A True Story of Love, Drugs and Prison in Modern China.

Robert Davis first went to China in 1988 as an overland backpacker and, after a hair-raising two months touring Pakistan, found himself in Kashgar, the fabled Silk Road city. Here his life was irrevocably changed when he fell head over heels in love with Sharapet, an Uighur woman who was already married with a ten-year-old daughter. Love made them blind to the bureaucracy they had to face, strong for the thousands of miles they had to travel to obtain permission to marry, and resolute against the rage of Sharapet's revenge-seeking ex-husband.

But Robert became involved in the trafficking of hashish. Arrested and taken 2,500 miles across China to Shanghai, he was sentenced to eight and a half years behind bars in one of the largest, most overcrowded jails in Asia - fighting against a corrupt system in grim conditions, with death a constant threat.

Fate, however, gave Robert a unique opportunity to observe a little-known world, one that only he and three other Britons had seen since China's Liberation in 1949. He concedes, too, that the prison system fed him well and allowed him the chance to learn three languages and to hone his skills in oil painting and playing the guitar.

'Perfection She Dances' is a story of fatalism and inevitability; an account of international drug-smuggling and the horrors of prison; and a moving tale of a love that endured years of separation and hardship.