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When Five Dragons, a poor country boy, chances his fortune in the city, his brutal humiliation at the hands of a gang of wharf rats hones his purpose to a knife-edge. His desire for power and women is insatiable and when he marries Cloud Weave, the disgraced beautiful daughter of a wealthy rice emporium owner, and inherits the business, fulfilment beckons. But men tire easily of their playthings, particularly in this wayward family, and Cloud Weave is too headstrong to be bound by the shackles of her sex...

In his unforgettablefirstnovel.Su long writes about pre-war China and the unspoken brutality of a family that is devouring itself THESUNDAYTIMES

'Su long's evocation of one family's destiny in 1930s'China is stark and vivid in the extreme. A chilling and macabre tale, characteristically told with imagination and unflinching honesty1 TIMEOUT

'Su Tong has fashioned in Rice a heart-rending, and enormously

passionate assault on the traditions of the western novel. There's no love

here; there's no redemption; there's no triumph of the individual. Unless you

count the triumph inherent in SuTong's overwhelming

imaginative virtuosity'

RICK MOODY, author of PURPLE AMERICA