In 1863, a sexually obsessed opium addict is sent away from Cambridge to live in the country where he becomes the lead suspect in a series of threatening letters and crimes.
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year. "A literary Dr. Frankenstein, [Palliser] has stitched together parts of Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe. The result is deliciously wicked." —Ron Charles, Washington Post Charles Palliser's work has been hailed as "so compulsively absorbing that reality disappears" (New York Times). Since his extraordinary debut, The Quincunx, his works have sold over one million copies worldwide. With his novel, Rustication, he returns to the town of Thurchester, which he evoked so hauntingly in The Unburied. It is winter 1863, and Richard Shenstone, aged seventeen, has been sent down—"rusticated"—from Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion. Addicted to opium and tormented by sexual desire, he finds temporary refuge in a dilapidated old mansion on the southern English coast inhabited by his newly impoverished mother and his sister, Effie. Soon, graphic and threatening letters begin to circulate among his neighbors, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from vivisection to murder. Atmospheric, lurid, and brilliantly executed, Rustication is sure to spin readers into its "spider's web of intrigue and violence" (Jane Jakeman, The Independent).
In the 1960s and 70s, the government of China conducted a rather unusual social experiment called ‘Up to the mountains and down to the village’ which sent urban youths to the countryside in an attempt to reverse the flow of the rural population migrating to towns and cities as was generally occurring in other parts of the world at that time. Originally published in 1975, Seybolt draws together a compilation of documents discussing the project which sent roughly 12 million urban youths to settle in the countryside in the years 1968-1975 alone. The documents discuss issues such as university, love and marriage as well as the details of the experiment. This title will be of interest to students of sociology, anthropology and Asian studies.
During China’s Cultural Revolution, millions of middle school and high school graduates, called zhiqing, were sent to the countryside to receive reeducation from peasants. They dug the earth daily, with deep conviction that they would play an important role in the transformation of rural China. Jianqing Zheng’s rusticated years were central to his poetic imagination in this collection. “The poems in this collection reveal a complex narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution and its Sent-Down-Youth. While each poem stands alone—graced with stunning descriptions (“At fish-belly dawn”), images (“hands fluttering / like butterflies on cotton fluffs”), and all too human struggles (“I am tired of being tired; / of being told what to do”)—together they tell of a larger history.”—Rita Costello
An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Lady Gloria Swenson has lived through eighteen months she can never forget or escape. Can Lord Clare help her to live, when all she wants to do is hide? When Jeremy Blessing, better known as the Marquess of Clare, discovers a proud young lady wandering his father's lands, he finds himself looking for her angelic smile and golden head at every turn. But Lady Gloria Swenson has lived through eighteen months she'll never forget or escape, no matter how far she's already run. When Clare insists on her time, then her trust, and finally offers a marriage to protect her, they'll have to confront the thorny issues of all complex relationships one difficult negotiation at a time, even as they flee across the Irish Sea and the through the Scottish borderlands in a futile search for safety. Money, family, children, and a vindictive, greedy man all collude to separate them, but it is Gloria's reticence that Clare has to conquer more than any other obstacle. Will Gloria overcome her fears and her disillusionment? What will Clare have to sacrifice to bring them together?
During China’s Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong’s "rustication program" resettled 17 million urban youths, known as "sent downs," to the countryside for manual labor and socialist reeducation. This book, the most comprehensive study of the program to be published in either English or Chinese to date, examines the mechanisms and dynamics of state craft in China, from the rustication program’s inception in 1968 to its official termination in 1980 and actual completion in the 1990s. Rustication, in the ideology of Mao's peasant-based revolution, formed a critical component of the Cultural Revolution's larger attack on bureaucrats, capitalists, the intelligentsia, and "degenerative" urban life. This book assesses the program’s origins, development, organization, implementation, performance, and public administrative consequences. It was the defining experience for many Chinese born between 1949 and 1962, and many of China's contemporary leaders went through the rustication program. The author explains the lasting impact of the rustication program on China's contemporary administrative culture, for example, showing how and why bureaucracy persisted and even grew stronger during the wrenching chaos of the Cultural Revolution. She also focuses on the special difficulties female sent-downs faced in terms of work, pressures to marry local peasants, and sexual harassment, predation, and violence. The author’s parents were both sent downs, and she was able to interview over fifty former sent downs from around the country, something never previously accomplished. China's Sent-Down Generation demonstrates the rustication program’s profound long-term consequences for China's bureaucracy, for the spread of corruption, and for the families traumatized by this authoritarian social experiment. The book will appeal to academics, graduate and undergraduate students in public administration and China studies programs, and individuals who are interested in China’s Cultural Revolution era.