Review | Opium wars and Nanjing massacre turned into epic fantasy in Chinese author’s debut novel

The Poppy War
by R.F. Kuang
Harper Voyagers

4/5 stars

The Poppy War is the first novel by R.F. – or Rebecca – Kuang. Born in Guangdong province, Kuang emigrated to the United States and then England, where she plans to study at Cambridge University. The Poppy War, which she wrote aged 19, opens a trilogy that promises to “[grapple] with drugs, shamanism, and China’s bloody twentieth century”.

Her heroine, Rin, has something of her creator: she is young, precocious and ambitious. Rin’s rise from nowhere fits into a template of modern heroes. Poor, orphaned and brilliant, she moves from the peasantry into the highest echelons of the neo-mystical Sinegard academy. Tutored by the rene­gade Master Jiang, she leads the fight against the invading Mugens (or Japanese).

Kuang turns recentish Asian history – the opium wars, Sino-Japanese war, Nanjing massacre – into epic fantasy with considerable skill. This is elevated by an accompanying philosophy, drawn from J.R.R. Tolkien as much as Confucius, that memorialises individuals caught up in violent swathes of history. In this, Rin proves a compel­ling heroine. She is vulnerable as a peasant and a woman – she can imagine her life as the chattel of a brutal husband – and courageous enough to escape what fate and society had decreed for her. Part two can’t arrive fast enough.

Snap
by Belinda Bauer
Bantam Press