Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters

A "vivid and extremely interesting" novel of an upper-class Chinese wife's quest for freedom, from the Nobel Prize-winning author (The New Yorker).

At forty, Madame Wu is beautiful and much respected as the wife of one of China's oldest upper-class houses. Her birthday wish is to find a young concubine for her husband and to move to separate quarters, starting a new chapter of her life. When her wish is granted, she finds herself at leisure, no longer consumed by running a sixty-person house...