From a delapidated mansion in Melbourne, to an ancestral home in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, this book guides us through a mystery that links the life of one human being to another, connecting the past to the present, entwining history with fiction.
Piecing together the puzzle of exiled artist Lang Tzu, last of a wealthy Chinese lineage, writer Steven Muir finds himself caught in the strange and haunted landscape. Both men know the solitude of the only child, and the exquisite poignancy of the relationship with parents. But beneath the familiar are the twisted threads of Lang's past - the sweep of ancestry and its lingering inheritance.
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
