The Chinese Love Pavilion.
"The golden room enslaved of the rising sun, the jade room of day long happiness, the scarlet room wherein the setting sun lies sleeping. These were the names we gave the rooms": Paul Scott's The Chinese Love Pavilion; inscribed by him
The Chinese Love Pavilion.
SCOTT, Paul.
$475.00
Item Number: 120224
London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1960.
Early printing of this dramatic story by the author of The Raj Quartet which many consider to be his best novel. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “With Best Wishes to A.A. Martin from the author Aug 24 ’67” and signed on the title page, “Paul Scott.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket design by Angela Collins.
Scott's novels persistently draw on his experiences of India and service in the armed forces with strong subtexts of uneasy relationships between male friends or brothers; both the social privilege and the oppressive class and racial strata of the empire are represented, and novel by novel the canvas broadens. The Chinese Love Pavilion, after an Indian opening, is largely concerned with events in Malaya under Japanese occupation. "One of the best English novels of the last decade... the drama of events, the pure narrative power, has such strength that one is borne along on its current effortlessly" (John Davenport, The Observer). "Enchantingly exotic, sensuous and colourful" (Muriel Sparks).
