The Peking Letter: A Novel of the Chinese Civil War
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Topping, Seymour, PUBLISHER: PublicAffairs, In this historical novel of the Chinese civil war, a young American scholar, Eric Jensen, who is studying ancient Chinese philosophy and art, falls in love with a Chinese revolutionary and is unexpectedly drawn by her into a desperate struggle to save Peking from destruction. Jensen's journey takes him across remote battlefields where the armies of Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek are locked in enormous battles, through allies under Communist siege, and along the byways of old Peking from imperial palaces to elegant brothels. As he and his Chinese love pursue their underground mission, the Central Intelligence Agency also embroils Jensen in a bitter ideological confrontation in the United States over China policy. Seymour Topping, a renowned journalist who covered the Chinese civil war, creates in this novel a vivid, panoramic picture of revolutionary China. The Peking Letter is at once a love story, a spy thriller, and a remarkable view of a society on the brink of social and cultural transformation.