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The Language of Solitude

Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

Brooding expat and journalist Paul Leibovitz is beginning to imagine a new life for himself in Hong Kong, one in which the grief over a recent family tragedy doesn't consume him and his love for Christine Wu brings him great joy. When Christine gets an unexpected and emotionally-charged letter from her estranged brother, Paul journeys with her to a remote village outside Shanghai, where a mysterious illness is affecting the locals.

Paul discovers a powerful chemical conglomerate is polluting a nearby lake, and Chinese officials are doing nothing to stop it. The victims demand justice, but taking legal action could prove even more dangerous than the strange disease itself. Government intimidation and political corruption threaten to suppress even the most passionate and audacious environmental activists. If Paul doesn't walk away, he could pull the woman he loves back into a world she escaped from decades ago—putting their relationship and their lives at risk.

Suspenseful and rife with the page-turning storytelling that defines Sendker's remarkable work and harks back to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Dragon Games offers a peerless look into contemporary China.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 20, 2017
      Set in Hong Kong, Sendker’s thoughtful, politically astute sequel to 2015’s Whispering Shadows finds grieving expatriate Paul Leibovitz’s tentative new happiness with Christine Wu imperiled after Christine receives a letter from her long-lost brother, Da Long. His wife, Min Fang, is a victim of a recent cluster of mysterious ailments, which Paul realizes are caused by a chemical conglomerate polluting local water. Min Fang can’t be healed, but more will suffer if the corporation is not held accountable. Da Long and his two children, elegant musician Yin-Yin and anxious Communist Party member Xiao Hu, have misgivings about Paul’s call to action. Indeed, the eyes of the state track Paul and a newly emboldened Yin-Yin’s probing, and she must decide whether justice is worth risking what’s left of the shattered family’s safety. Sendker draws on broad knowledge of Chinese politics and mores to craft scenes both comic and tragic, illuminating how ordinary people struggle to navigate opaque, omniscient systems of power. Despite a too-neat resolution, this novel offers a rich portrait of compromise and courage under a repressive state.

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  • English

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