Excerpt from The Ten Thousand Things by John Spurling, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I want to go home now," she whispered back.

"It's very clever," Wang said to the man. "It's brilliant, but we must go."

The man sat smiling at them and didn't seem to mind. As they bowed politely and withdrew, he raised one arm in a lordly farewell greeting.

"Yin," he said. "You saw it? First Yang . . ." gesturing at the waterfall picture hanging on the wall, "then Yin receives Yang." He rotated both arms vigorously in front of him to suggest the agitation of the pool he had depicted on the floor.

"It's really brilliant," Wang repeated.

"Come again, dear boy! Artist. Always welcome. Yes."

They did not go again, not even to the waterfall. The man had frightened Peony, but he had affected Wang deeply too, in a way he couldn't analyse or perhaps wasn't fully aware of then. Ever afterwards he still vividly remembered the episode and the exact look of the splashpainting and still felt he hadn't come to terms with it.

Excerpted from The Ten Thousand Things by John Spurling. Copyright © 2014 by John Spurling. Excerpted by permission of Overlook. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.