Lisa See

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain.

Her new novel is Peony in Love.

The start of a Q & A at the author's website:

Q: How do you compare Peony in Love to Snow Flower and the Secret Fan?

A: I think of Peony in Love as a kind of reverse mirror image of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Snow Flower takes place in rural Chinese villages in the 19th century and was about poor, uneducated, bound-footed women, who lived in seclusion and longed to be heard. Peony in Love takes place in a thriving city in the 17th century. These women are from wealthy families and highly, highly educated. They have bound feet, but they don’t live in seclusion. Like the nu shu writers, they also long to be heard. Peony in Love is based on the true story of three women who were married to the same man – one right after the other – who together wrote the first book of its kind to have been published anywhere in the world. These women were part of a larger phenomenon. In the 17th century, there were more women writers in China who were being published than altogether in the rest of the world at that time. And while there were hardly any women being published in the rest of the world back then, there were thousands of women being published in China.

Read the entire Q & A.

The Page 99 Test: Peony in Love.

--Marshal Zeringue