BookBrowse Reviews Peony in Love: A story steeped in the traditions and rituals of 17th century China that addresses the universal themes of friendship, the power of words, and the age-old desire of women to be heard

Following the runaway success of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which was set in a remote corner of nineteenth-century China where tradition and foot-bound women developed their own secret code for communication known as nu shu (woman's writing), Lisa See returns to tell a story set two centuries earlier in which, for a short period, wealthy women in the Yangtze delta area, often living in seclusion, published their writings.

The mid-17th century was a turbulent time for China; the Ming dynasty that had controlled China for almost 300 years (not the China we know today but the South-East corner of the continent) collapsed as the Manchus (from the North-East) invaded, raping and pillaging as they went (eventually establishing the Qing Dynasty which ruled until its collapse in...