Mid-life crisis, 13th-century style

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.

It imagines the life of the 13th-century Chinese scholar-artist Wang Meng, whose misfortune it was to live in interesting times, during the closing years of the Mongol invaders’ Yuan dynasty. Much of the time Wang spends staring at mountains and rivers and discussing the finer distinctions of Tao and Buddhist philosophy. He believes that ‘the good and gentle side of life was stronger and more permanent than the bad’. Wang is one of a small circle of artists who meet at regular intervals, often in the 13th-century equivalent of today’s beneficent arts foundations. In his descriptions of such places, as elsewhere in this book, the reader may get the agreeable feeling that the author is poking gentle fun.