The Ten Thousand Things
In the turbulent final years of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Meng is a minor bureaucrat in the government of the Mongol conquerors. He is also an extraordinarily gifted artist whose paintings capture the infinite expanse of China's natural beauty. But an empire in turmoil is not a place or time for sitting still. On his journeys across the realm, Wang encounters fellow master painters, a fierce female warrior known as the White Tigress who recruits him as a military strategist, and an unprepossessing young Buddhist monk who rises from beggary to extraordinary heights.
John Spurling's award-winning The Ten Thousand Things seamlessly fuses the epic and the intimate with the precision and depth that the real-life Wang Meng brought to his art.
Book details
- Format
- Paperback
- ISBN
- 9780715654941
- Published
- 16 March 2023
- Pages
- 368
- Duration
- Dimensions
- 129 x 198 mm
- Genre
- Historical Fiction
- Imprint
- Duckworth
Reviews
'Spellbinding... The Ten Thousand Things has the sort of sensual prose that makes the reader purr with delight and is surely destined to be one of the books of the year'
'In this immersive tale of a landscape artist's life, written with restrained lyricism, John Spurling has also given us an entertaining and insightful study about the art of nature, and the nature of art'
'A truly remarkable achievement... Dramatic, absorbing, tender and profound... extraordinary and wonderful'
'An enormous pleasure from start to finish'
'This is an extraordinary novel. Spurling brings together his strengths as a dramatist, an art critic and a novelist. It is an impressive combination that gives a tone of authenticity to his absorbing story and adds to its enjoyment. I look forward to the film'
'I was amazed by The Ten Thousand Things, and by John Spurling's powerful imagination - with ten thousand details, he has brought the ancient Chinese artist Wang Meng to life in beautiful prose'
'Wang Meng is one of the most fascinating figures in Chinese history. In this lucid and brilliant novel, John Spurling uses him as a key character to recreate the end of an empire. A vivid evocation of a turbulent era with echoes of debates today about loyalty, choices and artistic integrity'
