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Books

Mid-life crisis, 13th-century style

A review of The Ten Thousand Things, by John Spurling. This intricately wrought study of medieval Chinese scholar-artists is wonderfully well imagined

10 May 2014

9:00 AM

10 May 2014

9:00 AM

The Ten Thousand Things John Spurling

Duckworth Overlook, pp.354, £16.99, ISBN: 9780715647318

The word delicate is seldom a compliment.  I once threw a saucepan of hot soup out of a fifth storey London window because a boyfriend said it had a delicate flavour, by which he meant none at all. This novel, though, is delicate in an entirely good way: it is fine, intricately wrought, understated.

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