Forbidden City A Novel Vanessa Hua by Vanessa Hua 9780399178832, 039917883X, 2021043089, 2021043090 instant download after payment.

“Arresting, beautiful, & epic, Forbidden City left me breathless by the last page. Hua’s writing is propulsive & packed with rich historical details & exquisitely crafted characters. Mei’s story will stay with you long after reading.”— Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept

On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution & her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence—a forbidden city unto itself—that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei beelines toward the Chairman.

Mei gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante—& paramour. While he fends off political rivals, Mei faces down schemers from the dance troupe who will stop at nothing to take her place, as well as the Chairman’s imperious wife, who has secret plans of her own.

When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor, but the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.

Forbidden City is an epic yet intimate portrayal of one of the world’s most powerful & least understood leaders during this extraordinarily turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Mei’s harrowing journey toward truth & disillusionment raises questions about power, manipulation, & belief, as seen through the eyes of a passionate teenage girl.

Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle & the author of a short story collection, Deceit & Other Possibilities. For two decades, she has been wr