Lesley Downer
Lesley Downer’s great passion is Japan. Her mother was Chinese and her father a professor of Chinese, so she grew up in a house full of books on Asia. But it was Japan, not China, that proved the more alluring. She has lived there on and off for a total of some fifteen years and written many books about the country and its culture. It has been an ongoing love affair. Read more…
Lesley’s latest book and her first novel, The Last Concubine, is out now. Read on below.
The Last Concubine
‘From long ago
Though I had heard to meet
Could only mean to part
Yet I gave myself to you
Forgetful of the coming dawn.’
How do you fall in love when your society has no word for it? The Last Concubine is an epic love story closely based on historical events, chronicling nineteenth-century Japan’s extraordinary change from a medieval to a modern country. This is the story of a shogun, a princess and the three thousand women of the women’s palace – all of whom really existed – and of the civil war that brought their way of life to an end. Read more…
The Last Concubine is now available in 25 languages!
The Last Concubine now out in paperback.
The Last Concubine shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year!
