Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
Sweet Li Jie - cover

Sweet Li Jie

David Dabydeen

Publisher: Peepal Tree Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

In Sweet Li Jie, two distant worlds converge: Wuhan Province in China and British Guiana.
Jia Yun, a traveling textile merchant, leaves Wuhan to join the exodus of migrants escaping poverty. Most of them to become indentured labourers in the canefields of Demerara.
Through heartfelt letters intended for his sweetheart, Li Jie, Jia Yun paints a vivid picture of life for Indians, Africans, and other ethnic groups under British rule during the twilight years of indentureship. Meanwhile, the novel's sections set in China reveal the struggles of rural Wuhan under a crumbling feudal regime.
"Sweet Li Jie" delves into complex interpersonal relations, from the landlord-servant dynamics in Wuhan to the bond between Jia Yun and his Afro-Guyanese guide, Harris. Amid vulnerability and uncertainty, and the complexities of living in servitude, these characters grapple for personhood and interdependence.
Available since: 04/07/2025.
Print length: 166 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Lazarus Bell – Illaun Bowe Crime Thriller #2 - An Irish Murder Mystery - cover

    The Lazarus Bell – Illaun Bowe...

    Patrick Dunne

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0 
    A gruesome summer crimewave in the Boyne Valley complete with ritual murders and a mysterious plague-bringing Madonna – intrepid archaeologist Illaun Bowe is back in Irish king of crime Patrick Dunne's spine-tingling The Lazarus Bell!

'It's not what you think,' he rasped, his tongue dry and clicking inside his mouth. A look of fear had invaded his eyes. I came as close as I dared. His voice dropped to a barely detectable whisper. 'It's worse … far worse.'

A beautiful carved wooden Madonna, sealed tightly into a lead coffin, is discovered in a plague graveyard in the sleepy village of Castleboyne in Ireland – a fascinating but routine call-out for archaeologist Illaun Bowe.

That is, until they take the coffin out of the ground and a black liquid oozes out from the casing, accidentally spilling over one of the workers. Within 24 hours, his skin breaks out in pus-filled lesions, and his organs fail, one by one …

Soon hysteria breaks out in Castleboyne, with a quarantine imposed on the town by the Department of Health and nasty tabloid speculation that the disease has been brought to the area by the new immigrant population. Illaun has to get to the bottom of what was in the coffin to reassure herself that a deadly disease hasn't been unleashed upon the community because of her carelessness. Then a young boy is brought into the hospital, with the same symptoms as Terry …

As the summer temperatures soar, the hysteria is fuelled by the finding of a torso floating in the River Boyne, an African woman killed for ritual purposes. Meanwhile, someone is making it dangerously clear to Illaun that they want that statue …

Dive into The Lazarus Bell, another heart-stopping macabre thriller from internationally bestselling author Patrick Dunne. Full of twists, turns and uncovered conspiracies, join archaeologist Illaun Bowe in this unpredictable, atmospheric novel guaranteed to give you goosebumps.

Who knew archaeology could be so interesting – and dangerous?


Praise for Patrick Dunne

Dunne may be the next big thing in the thriller field out of Ireland.
Irish Independent

[Patrick Dunne], in his multi-layered novels, explores the darker recesses of the human psyche where his plots are powered by the mysterious and the macabre and include strange happenings in such places as 'plague pits' and cemeteries.
The Meath Chronicle

A gripping thriller
Books Ireland

… attractively-drawn heroine Illaun Bowe neatly combines archaeology, medieval history and current sociological tensions in Ireland in an absorbing read.
Irish Independent
    Show book
  • Bloodborn - cover

    Bloodborn

    Kathryn Fox

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0 
    “Kathryn Fox has created a forensic physician who readers of Patricia Cornwell will adore.” —James PattersonDr. Anya Crichton, the protagonist of Kathryn Fox’s critically acclaimed thrillers Without Consent and Malicious Intent returns in Bloodborn, a spellbinding new masterwork of crime fiction that fans of C.S.I. and Bones will adore. New York Times bestseller Kathy Reichs raves, “Like Fox, her creator, Anya Crichton is a force of nature. Bloodborn is a medical thriller that grips from first page to last.” Gritty and powerful, Bloodborn plunges Anya into her most explosive and dangerous investigation of all, as she confronts a seemingly untouchable family of criminals responsible for a series of savage and shocking murders.
    Show book
  • The Witch of Exmoor - cover

    The Witch of Exmoor

    Drabble Margaret

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0 
    A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year: “Part social satire, part thriller, and entirely clever” (Elle).   It is a midsummer’s evening in the English countryside, and the three grown Palmer children are coming to the end of an enjoyable meal in the company of their partners and offspring. From this pleasant vantage point they play a dinner-party game: What kind of society would you be willing to accept if you didn’t know your place in it? But the abstract question of justice, like all their family conversations, is eventually brought back to the more pressing problem of their eccentric mother, Frieda, the famous writer, who has abandoned them and her old life, and gone to live alone in Exmoor.   Frieda has always been a powerful and puzzling figure, a monster mother with a mysterious past. What is she plotting against them now? Has some inconvenient form of political correctness led her to favor her enchanting half-Guyanese grandson? What will she do with her money? Is she really writing her memoirs? And why has she disappeared? Has the dark spirit of Exmoor finally driven her mad?  The Witch of Exmoor brilliantly interweaves high comedy and personal tragedy, unraveling the story of a family whose comfortable, rational lives, both public and private, are about to be violently disrupted by a succession of sinister, messy events. “Leisurely and mischievous,” it is a dazzling, wickedly gothic tale of a British matriarch, her three grasping children, and the perils of self-absorption (The New Yorker).   “As meticulous as Jane Austen, as deadly as Evelyn Waugh.” —Los Angeles Times
    Show book
  • A Hard Death - A Novel - cover

    A Hard Death - A Novel

    Jonathan Hayes

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0 
    Forensic pathologist Edward Jenner survived the horrific ordeal of the Inquisitor serial slayings in New York, but not the political fallout. With his state medical license suspended, he hopes to repair his shattered life while working as a medical examiner in Douglas County, Florida. But evil is not confined to big cities alone.Two corpses pulled from a sunken car—followed by the grisly discovery of four more bodies hanging in the Everglades—are evidence of an insidious rot infecting this quiet coastal resort community. Suddenly Jenner's investigation is turning up grim traces of a nightmarish conspiracy—and with no one to trust and nowhere to turn, his only hope of survival is to walk away . . . something Jenner could never do.
    Show book
  • The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 1 (Light Novel) - cover

    The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 1...

    Natsu Hyuuga

    • 1
    • 9
    • 0 
    In the East is a land ruled by an emperor, whose consorts and serving women live in a sprawling complex known as the hougong, the rear palace. Maomao, an unassuming girl raised in an unassuming town by her apothecary father, never imagined the rear palace would have anything to do with her—until she was kidnapped and sold into service there.Though she looks ordinary, Maomao has a quick wit, a sharp mind, and an extensive knowledge of medicine. That’s her secret, until she encounters a resident of the palace at least as perceptive as she is: the head eunuch, Jinshi. He sees through Maomao’s façade and makes her a lady-in-waiting to none other than the Emperor’s favorite consort... so she can taste the lady’s food for poison!At her lady’s side, Maomao starts to learn about everything that goes on in the rear palace—not all of it seemly. Can she ever lead a quiet life, or will her powers of deduction and insatiable curiosity bring her ever more adventures, and ever more dangers?
    Show book
  • Cuckold Bestiality 8-Pack - cover

    Cuckold Bestiality 8-Pack

    Penelope Liksit

    • 0
    • 17
    • 0 
    Eight nasty tales of wives forcing their husbands to watch as they do the nasty with the animal kingdom. And maybe when it's all over they will make their pathetic husbands do some sloppy seconds clean-up! 

 
I BROUGHT HOME A PACK OF RABID WILD DOGS AND FUCKED THEM IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND/CUCKED ON THE CAMPING TRIP...BY A BEAR/TAKEN BY MY BULL...LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY/TAKEN AT THE HORSE RACE YOU GO BEFORE THE DOG DOES! AND I’LL SHOW YOU WHY!/GANGBANGED BY THE GAME/ THE TALKING HORSE AND THE MARRIED WOMAN/CUCKOLDING MASTER
    Show book