José Frèches (born 25 June 1950, in Dax, Landes) is a French historical novelist with novels set in China. His first trilogy The Jade Disk is a story, set during the Warring States period in disunited China. It tells the story of the character of the rich merchant and eventual prime-minister Lü Buwei - real father of the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang. It portrays the struggles between the o…
Is it possible to change the course of time? The years have passed, the old king Zhong is dead and his son Anguo, the new king, chose Lubuwei, the horse dealer, as minister. Then it was Anguo’s turn to die, of sickness. Risking death, Lubuwei made it to free crown prince Yiren, a long-standing prisoner in an enemy realm, and put him on the Qin throne.
In other words, Lubuwei has won: he is rich, powerful and the woman he’s in love with, the dancer Zhaoji, will soon give birth to their son… But his taste for power doesn’t abate, he wants more and, above all, he wishes to thwart this legist fierceness overcoming the minds and oppressing people with excessive laws. That’s why he accepts, after some hesitation, a strange bet. He agrees to put his pregnant companion in the young king’s bed for the latter to become the official father of his own child, while planning later to secretly swap the new-born for another one, brought back from a remote region…
The plan seems perfect: the baby, Zheng, is born at the royal court and the “substitute”, Golden Fish, is found. Only the swap is still to be done. But it proves cruelly impossible…
How to change the course of time? How to deal with your own mistakes without weighing heavy on the destiny of two innocent children who will grow up together in an incredible lie? China is vast, the enemy is lying in wait at the outpost and the power is tottering. Who will save the Empire? Zheng, the lonely one, madly in love with the Prime Minister’s daughter and dreaming of immortality? Or Golden Fish, the delicious ingenuous, who believes in the virtue of books and fights for any freedom?
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