Kai Lung's Golden Hours

Kai Lung #2

by Ernest Bramah

Kai Lung's Golden Hours By Ernest Bramah. Preface: Hilaire Belloc. Man is born to make. His business is to construct; to plan; to carry out the plan: to fit together, and to produce a finished thing. That human art in which it is most difficult to achieve this end and in which it is far easier to neglect it than in any other is the art of writing. Yet this much is certain, that unconstructed writing is at once worthless and ephemeral; and nearly the whole of our modern English writing is unconstructed, The matter of survival is perhaps not the most important, though it is a test of a kind, and it is a test which every serious writer feels most intimately. The essential is the matter of excellence; that a piece of work should achieve its end. But in either character, the character of survival or the character of intrinsic excellence, construction deliberate and successful is the fundamental condition. It may be objected that the mass of writing must in any age neglect construction. We write to establish a record for a few days; or to send a thousand unimportant messages;or to express for others or for ourselves something very vague and perhaps very weak in the way of emotion, which does not demand construction and at any rate cannot command it. No writer can be judged by the entirety of his writings, for these would include every note he ever sent round the corner every memorandum he ever made upon his shirt cuff, But when a man sets out to write as a serious business, proclaiming by the nature of his publication and presentment that he is doing something he thinks worthy of the time and place in which he lives and of the people to whom he belongs, then if he does not construct he is negligible. Yet,I say,the great mass of men today do not attempt it in the English tongue, and the proof is that you can discover in their slipshod pages nothing of a seal or stamp. You do not, opening a book at random, say at once;This is the voice of such and such an one. It is no one's manner or voice. It is part of a common babel. Therefore in such a time as that of our decline,to come across work which is planned, executed and achieved has something of the effect produced by the finding of a wrought human thing in a wild, It is like finding, as I once found, deep hidden in the tangled rank grass of autumn in Burgundy, on the edge of a wood not far from Dijon, a neglected statue of the eighteenth century. It is like coming round the corner of some wholly desolate upper valley in the mountains and seeing before one a well cultivated close and a strong house in the midst. It is now many years,I forget how many it may be twenty or more, or it may be a little less since The Wallet of Kai Lung was sent me by a friend, The effect produced upon my mind at the first opening of its pages was in the same category as the effect produced by the discovery of that hidden statue in Burgundy, or the coming upon an unexpected house in the turn of a high Pyrenean gorge.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Classics, China, Speculative Fiction, British Literature, Adventure

242 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Bramah was a reclusive soul, who shared few details of his private life with his reading public. His full name was Ernest Bramah Smith. It is known that he dropped out of Manchester Grammar School at the age of 16, after displaying poor aptitude as a student and thereafter went into farming, and began writing vignettes for the local newspaper. Bramah's father was a wealthy man who rose from factory hand to a very wealthy man in a short time, and who supported his son in his various career attempts.

Bramah went to Fleet Street after the farming failure and became a secretary to Jerome K. Jerome, rising to a position as editor of one of Jerome's magazines. At some point, he appears to have married Mattie.

More importantly, after being rejected by 8 publishers, the Wallet of Kai Lung was published in 1900, and to date, remains in print. Bramah wrote in different areas, including political science fiction, and mystery. He died at the age of 74. See http://www.ernestbramah.com for more information.

Reviews

[Yigal Zur · Rating 4 out of 5]

rare game of great funny writing. Kai Lung is a guy who get in troubles all the time, he is not in favour with authorities and he fell in love with the most beautiful girl around. for me it is amazing how Bramah who never went to China got it quite right. it is real fun.

[Georgie-who-is-Sarah-Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it possible to suspend topaz in one cup of the balance and weigh it against amethyst in the other; or who...can compare the tranquillising grace of a maiden with the invigorating pleasure of witnessing a well-contested rat-fight?

Forget the frenetic world of Facebook, the torrent of trivia that is Twitter. This review brings you something different. This review wants you to Relax. This review invites you to kick back, turn off the phone, and enjoy the journey in the company of Ernest Bramah's wonderful Oriental creation - Kai Lung, itinerant story teller, master of Litotes, Euphemism and Understatement, and Apologist Extraordinary for Slow Reading.

In KLGH, Kai Lung, captured by the Shan Tien and "the secretary of his hand, the contemptible Ming-shu", is befriended by the maiden Hwa-mei. Between them, Scheherazade-like, they tell Shan Tien story after story to postpone Kai Lung's execution. But the plot is the merest nothing - it's all about the sly witty stories, and the delightful confection of a totally illusory world.

Ernest Bramah never visited China - in spite of the mock-Oriental language he uses to such effect -
“The full roundness of your illustrious outline is as a display of coloured lights to gladden my commonplace vision.”
or - "May bats defile his Ancestral Tablets and goats propagate within his neglected tomb!" chanted the band in unison. "May the sinews of his hams snap suddenly in moments of achievement!"
or - “Your insight is clear and unbiased,” said the gracious Sovereign. “But however entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?”
(A line Dorothy Sayers lifts to use in Busman's Honeymoon, incidentally.)

But it's doubtful whether the China Bramah writes about ever really existed anyway. Cunning beggars, wily maidens, power-crazed mandarins, naive youths: they may appear superficially Chinese, but only to the extent that Gilbert's Gentlemen of Japan in the Mikado are really Japanese. What's actually going on is a delightful satire of late Victorian England, and universal follies.
“Yet,” protested the story-teller hopefully, “it is wisely written: ‘He who never opens his mouth in strife can always close his eyes in peace.’”
“Doubtless,” assented the other. “He can close his eyes assuredly. Whether he will ever again open them is another matter.”
or - It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.

This is writing that revels in being artificial, in using elaborate politeness and contrived phrases in all circumstances however inappropriate.
“So long as we do not lose sight of the necessity whereby my official position will presently involve me in condemning you to a painful death, and your loyal subjection will necessitate your whole-hearted co-operation in the act, there is no reason why the flower of literary excellence should wither for lack of mutual husbandry,” remarked [Shan Tien] tolerantly.
“Your enlightened patronage is a continual nourishment to the soil of my imagination,” replied the story teller.

This is story telling that demands, and rewards attention. The pay-offs are oblique.
“The person who has performed this slight service is Ting, of the outcast line of Lao,” said the student with an admiring bow.. “Having as yet achieved nothing, the world lies before him.”
“She who speaks is Hoa-mi, her father’s house being Chun,” replied the maiden agreeably. “...[He] possesses a wooden plough, two wheel-barrows, a red bow with threescore arrows, and a rice-field, and is therefore a person of some consequence.”
“True,” agreed Lao Ting, “though perhaps the dignity is less imposing than might be imagined in the eye of one who, by means of successive examinations, may ultimately become the Right hand of the Emperor.”
“Is the contingency an impending one?” inquired Hoa-mi, with polite interest.
“So far,” admitted Lao Ting, “it is more in the nature of a vision. There are, of necessity, many trials, and few can reach the ultimate end. Yet even the Yangtze-kiang has a source.”

I keep KLGH by my bed. It's my go-to book for ingenious stories where every line is a joy and there is something for everyone.
The prosperous and substantial find contentment in hearing of the unassuming virtues and frugal lives of the poor and unsuccessful. Those of humble origin, especially tea-house maidens and the like, are only really at home among stories of the exalted and quick-moving, the profusion of their robes, the magnificence of their palaces, and the general high-minded depravity of their lives.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bramah was private but in the little that I could shallowly research it seemed that he had no personal experience with the Asia of reality, so his comprehensive fantasy rendering is a remarkable thing. Was he drawing the ornate speech particulars and mannerisms from the popular view, or did he deep-dive into whatever material was available and building from there? I suppose the answer could be found with an extensive look into the names and elements he references but that sounds like a spectacularly boring project with little useful result. If you really want something more grounded, investigate a Judge Dee collection.

I would be curious to see how Bramah fits in the literary genealogy that leads to James Branch Cabell and Jack Vance, however. You can see Vance's prickly social squabbles lurking behind Bramah's ornate trial scenes and false politeness.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

This humble and inoffensive person, whose views could not possibly be of interest to exalted personages who might, by the influence of malign spirits, stumble across them, nevertheless dares to recommend this book as being replete with sayings of remarkable wisdom, such as the following:

"There is a time to silence an adversary with the honey of logical persuasion, and there is a time to silence him with the argument of a heavily-directed club."

"It has been said...that there are few situations in life that cannot honourably be settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night."

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tried to write my comments on Ernest Bramah’s Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, which I just finished, in the same style:

In the opinion of this lowly reader, the esteemed author before our unworthy eyes has created a gem of the highest quality, polished by fine craft.

But you can only do this so long before you get frustrated, which is why you have to admire Bramah, because he could maintain this oblique and ornate style throughout and still manage to tell a compelling and, more than often, extremely humorous story.

The titular character, Kai Lung, is a storyteller who runs afoul of the local authorities, in particular a rather nasty advisor. The problem is that Kai has set his eyes on a most beautiful young woman who is also highly desired by the advisor, and the mandarin in charge is quite corrupt. The one saving grace for Kai Lung is that the mandarin also likes a good story. Like Scherazade, Kai Lung is therefore in the positive of entertaining for his life, and that he is able to accomplish this is not due to the fragment of 1001 stories available to him, but also the help of his beloved (a fairly strong female character given the situation and the date this was written, 1922).

Not everyone will care for this book, because a style as circular and dense as this doesn’t lead itself to the short-attention-span-generation (only James Branch Cabell has a more elaborate, yet beautiful, prose form in fantasy). I don’t know what it was about the 1920s that enabled the creation of such great comedy (Bramah, Cabell, P.G. Wodehouse [who first became popular as a novelist in the 1920s], Thorne Smith). Maybe it was the post-War jubilation, the underground of prohibition, or the pre-Depression stockmarket? Not ours to wonder why, but just to enjoy and laugh.

[Alex Sarll]

I've no idea what first made me aware of Ernest Bramah. He's a rumoured origin for the not-actually-an-old-Chinese-proverb about living in interesting times, but I only found that out once I was already underway on this. Was it his association with Jerome K Jerome? Were his tales of a legendary China given as a point of comparison for Barry Hughart? Certainly that would be one of my points of reference, though even beyond the easy accusation of orientalism which could be directed at either man, there's a greater sense in Bramah that this China is as thin a disguise as Shakespeare's Italy or past could sometimes be for tales pointed at contemporary Britain. One of Kai Lung's fables turns out to be an elaborate shaggy dog story which, in the course of giving an origin story for willow pattern ceramics, also sets up an abstruse yet all the same groanworthy source for the term 'blackleg'. And indeed, even readers prepared to overlook the Western writer making so free with the East might bridle at the union-busting hero of that one*. As for the story where a father sets his daughter's suitors a quest to slay a dragon, that's one fairytale trope which really doesn't feel like it transfers to the very different dragons of China, even taking into account the typically urbane twist Bramah puts on the denouement. Because that's the real appeal here, the wry wit and elegant circumlocution; the way underlings will determinedly recast a terrible decision by or crushing defeat for a superior as a far-sighted victory; the manner in which one character will ostensibly give every impression of servile obedience while still making abundantly clear to the reader, and often to the other characters, that they think the person to whom they are speaking is an idiot and will do their utmost to frustrate their scheme. The overarching framework here is that the storyteller Kai Lung has been unjustly sentenced to death and seeks to delay or evade that by telling stories – but whereas Scheherazade achieved something similar with cliffhangers, Kai Lung instead delivers self-contained stories whose morals tend to sway his tormentors from their path. The effect is something like that of a duck, unruffled serenity above the water while paddling frantically beneath the surface. The downside is that as against Cabell, of whom it often reminded me, the glorious elaboration of the prose can often feel like the only point of the exercise; the stories themselves tend less to Cabell's grand illustrations of transience and melancholy, than to proving rather pedestrian points about eg the relative merits of art and wealth. Obviously this is part of the wider point, the proper planning by which Belloc's preface seems excessively excited, but it still leaves the whole thing feeling rather insubstantial, even brittle – and this, remember, is in comparison with James Branch Cabell. Though I must admit an exception for the last story, a terribly sad piece in which suffering villagers dutifully sacrifice themselves in support of a regime that doesn't care whether they live or die. Thank goodness that one doesn't have any contemporary resonance, eh, readers?

*Consider also a passage from early in this book, which Wikipedia uses as its first illustration of Bramah's prose: "Kai Lung rose guardedly to his feet, with many gestures of polite assurance and having bowed several times to indicate his pacific nature, he stood in an attitude of deferential admiration. At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension to conceal the direction of her flight". It's a pretty good illustration of his technique, and considerably shorter than most, but it could easily double as another reason for cancellation. And that's before one even moves beyond the text proper to the ad in the back of my pre-war Penguin copy...

[Bbrown · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is orientalism cranked up to eleven, and, though I can’t speak to how it felt when it was originally published one hundred years ago, to me that orientalism feels weird now. It’s like if someone from outside the U.S. wrote a book about cowboys that eat nothing but cheeseburgers and apple pie who get guidance from the ghost of George Washington and messages delivered by bald eagles, and the cowboys having to win a baseball game against a team owned by an obese businessman who manufactures Coca-Cola and assault rifles. I mean, even though that sounds like it could be pretty cool if done well, if the author were from India or Cambodia or somewhere and had no direct experience with the United States, it couldn’t help but be strange, right? That’s the deal with Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, written by a man who never left Europe, much less visited China.

Having no direct experience with his book’s setting, the book’s author Ernest Bramah basically made things up at of whole cloth. Take the writing, for instance:

“Alas, instructor,” interposed Shan Tien compassionately, “the sympathetic concern of my mind overflows upon the spectacle of your ill-used forbearance, yet you having banded together the two in a common infamy, it is the ancient privilege of this one to call the other to his cause. We are but the feeble mouthpieces of a benevolent scheme of all-embracing justice and greatly do I fear we must again submit.”

This is the style of the entirety of Kai Lung’s Golden Hours. It’s intentionally overwritten by Bramah so as to evoke the orient, but that intentionality doesn’t make the writing style any less awkward or prolix. The bad writing is a particularly serious flaw because Bramah evidently thought that the writing could make up for a lack of interesting plot or characters. It can’t.

In terms of the story, Kai Lung’s Golden Hours is One Thousand and One Nights set in China instead of the Middle East. Kai Lung is to be executed, but always manages to push back the execution one more day thanks to his storytelling. The resolution is different, to be fair, but it’s also not at all satisfying, Kai Lung forcing his release by essentially threatening to call in a higher-ranked mandarin, something he seemingly could have done from the very beginning. The stories that Kai Lung tells, which make up the majority of the book, are so uninteresting that I have nothing to say about them.

There are no characters, merely archetypes, and flat ones at that. Kai Lung is the storyteller, he has a love interest that helps him, a corrupt official that wants him executed, a foolish jailer, and not one of them has any depth. Are you supposed to be laughing with the book’s characters, or at them? Bramah doesn’t make that clear.

Bramah copied the story structure of One Thousand and One Nights, coated it in a layer of orientalism so thick that it’s off-putting, failed to tell a compelling story, and didn’t even attempt to write any characters with depth. To top it all off, the affectation of the writing makes it actively unpleasant to read. 1.5/5 stars, rounding up to 2 for now.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book on the recommendation of Noel Perrin's A Reader's Delight (which I cannot overpraise and overcommend), spurred by already knowing Bramah for his Max Carrados mystery stories. But it's not the first Kai Lung collection I proceeded to read, because Perrin points out that there were other Kai Lung collections, so I read The Wallet of Kai Lung first.

[A side note on A Reader's Delight: Perrin put together a collection of brief book reviews of forgotten, out-of-print books that he thought deserved searching out. Someone gave it to me, and I devoured it, and created a lengthy list. I remember being in a New Orleans antiquarian bookstore when I still had 60% of the list to go, and the owner saw I was consulting a list, and asked if he could see it. He read it carefully, and then said, "That is SOME list." He had four of the titles, if I recall. Anyway, it was full of wonderful discoveries like At the Bottom of the Harbor and The Walls Came Tumbling Down and Islandia; and I've been doling them out to myself slowly in the years since.]

Bramah created a fantasy China in creating the Kai Lung stories, and part of it was that he invented a complicated version of periphrastic and evasive dialogue that echoed Chinese court polite speech. It isn't the real world of China, but it reminds one of China, and is full of Chinese and Chinese-sounding names. It is an artifice, and it uses language full of artifice. It also works as social satire, and he's attacking British and American issues, pretending to talk about China.

Kai Lung is a professional itinerant storyteller. The previous volume was basically a loose collection of tales. This one steals the plot of A Thousand Nights and a Night, with Kai Lung imprisoned and on the verge of execution. With the help of a couple of secret allies, he manages to fend off his execution through timely storytelling.

Think of them as a sly version of Scheherazade, with more humorous material in the stories. I find these quite amusing (one must wear one's period glasses), but they are best read one piece at a time. Otherwise the artifice gets a little wearing.

And yes, I've got the other two on my unread shelf, waiting their turn.

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't expect to like this book so much. I liked the way it began, was intrigued and then lured along in like manner the whole way through. It's the premise that hooked me. Here's Kai Lung, a professional story-teller, who claims he knows a story for every situation in life. He's a bit cocky on that score. He gets thrown in jail, and soon takes on the role of a male Scheherazade, telling stories to save his life. His own story isn't that amazing, but the stories he tells! And it's not even that - it's the idea that there is a story for every situation. Not a new idea, I realize, but in this setting it really got me thinking. In a sense, this is one of the more realistic books I've ever read - in the way it mirrors life. I mean, we each have our own story, but as our story unfolds, it is the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves that truly affect and change our own story/life. I know this from experience. So I'm just a little amazed and sitting back right now, wondering if I have a story for every situation. It's a challenge.

[Chracker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a guilty pleasure. No-one writes sentences like he did - irony (especially litotes) reigns supreme, accompanied by lashings of euphemism.

“It has been said,” he began at length, withdrawing his eyes
reluctantly from an unusually large insect upon the ceiling and
addressing himself to the maiden, “that there are few
situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and
without any loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or
by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a
precipice on a dark night.”


He plays up the Chinoiserie aspect but it is mostly satirical of Victorian Britain:
The prosperous and substantial find contentment in hearing of the unassuming virtues and frugal lives of the poor and unsuccessful. Those of humble origin, especially tea-house maidens and the like, are only really at home among stories of the exalted and quick-moving, the profusion of their robes, the magnificence of their palaces, and the general high-minded depravity of their lives.

[Marjorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1925, the language is quite different but rewarding. The over arching story line is similar to Arabian nights with each tale putting off the end of the story teller. For anyone who loves mythical tales from the past.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know much about Chinese culture or anything, but I really enjoyed this book. It's similar to 1001 Nights where the narrator tells stories to delay his death. The language and narration takes a little getting used to, but it has a lot of subtle (and not so subtle) wit and humor.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall superior to the first book in the series, "The Wallet of Kai Lung". The last story is the best, but beware that unlike the others is is not comedic.

[Tim Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mock-Chinese Arabian Nights. Kai Lung must keep telling stories to delay his execution. Some of these stories are very funny indeed.

"It is written.". "Indeed. But it will never be set to music."

The Chinese style may be authentic, but its verbosity makes the book about twice as long as it should be. My patience run out, costing it a star.

[Sue Dounim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read these books sometime in the ancient mists of time: the copies of this one and "Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat" were printed in the 1970s. What Bramah does with the English language in these two works is nothing short of astounding. To read them requires the adoption of an entirely different frame of mind than you use in reading any other kind of book, fiction or non-fiction.
To be more precise: Bramah creates a world of a vaguely Oriental cast, using the English language and supposed Chinese proper nouns. But the style of dialog and narrative is infinitely elliptical, arch, formal, and oblique. Some of the constructions take your breath away. It can't be read quickly or skimmed.
Now this description may sound like the books are a tedious slog. And maybe they are to some or most modern readers. But to me, this pseudo-Oriental style contains the most delicious subtleties of plot, character, and setting.
To state the matter plainly, even the most astute and patient reader may, after a sincere attempt to enjoy the author's style, may elect to use the volume as a projectile against an inoffending wall, rather than fruitlessly attempt to extract a few drops of enjoyment from its arid pages.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up because it's quoted in one of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter / Harriet Vane mysteries, and I love those enough to give anything related to them a try.

When I read the blurb, I thought I'd probably made a horrible mistake. The English author of the 1920's is "famed for his traditional tales of Chinese literature", "exotic fantasies ... filled with corrupt mandarins, beautiful maidens, greedy merchants, alchemical potions, and more." I had a bad feeling I was in for clumsy ham-fisted racist portrayals of China as imagined by a British gentlemen.

I was pleasantly surprised. The book is a series of stories and/or parables loosely linked by plot (storyteller is falsely accused of a crime, and tells stories to delay his capital punishment), but it isn't dry -- there's a level of silliness that reminds me faintly of PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster books. Although the writing itself is in a quasi-formal, faux-foreign style (e.g. when referring to oneself, all of the characters say "this person" rather than "I"), the combination of the stiff-seeming language with the all-too-human characters, motives, and actions is actually rather charming.

[sally]

From Maria Bustillos: Through Orwell I met with two lifelong favorites, Ernest Bramah and Father Huc. Orwell recommends Bramah’s Max Carrados stories, which are not his finest work, yet still engaging. (Carrados, a blind detective, is portrayed in a manner that is too fanciful for me. For example, he can read the newspaper with his fingertips, as if it were braille. My carefully suspended disbelief collapsed like a dying soufflé.) But then I came to find that Bramah also wrote the Kai Lung series of chinoiserie novels that I do read over and over and always will, the way I do Wodehouse. They are magical and hilarious, guaranteed to dispel even the most stubborn case of the blues.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...

[Michael Lilliquist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a British writer nearly a century ago about an even more distant time in late imperial China, this book should not be taken as historically or culturally accurate (although it's not that far off the mark) -- but simply as storytelling.

In many ways, "Golden Hours" is very similar to "Arabian Nights." Both are a collection of pseudo-folk tales strung together by a frame story about the fictional storyteller him/herself. In both cases, the stories vary in tone and mood from serious to funny, and sometimes there are stories within stories. Also, in both cases, the psuedo-folk tales are not "authentic," but rather represent a literary attempt by latter-day outsiders to re-create the past.

In a nutshell, the stories in "Golden Hours" are enjoyable and the language is entertaining, but don't look for depth or profundity. Just be entertained.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you have strong objections to "orientalist" fantasy — as the editor of this edition says, it's set in China but it's a fantasy country unrelated to the real China — this probably won't work for you. That said, I enjoyed the story of Kai Lung, a storyteller who (in this volume of the series) is sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge but buys time by constantly spinning stories to suit the mood of the mandarin sitting in judgment. Bramah's writing is droll, elegant and leisurely; my favorite is probably his observation that you can solve any problem with "an honorable suicide, a bag of gold or throwing a hated enemy over a cliff in the dead of night." The writing makes it slow going — if you rush, you miss half the fun — so if you want to try Bramah, wait until you have to read at leisure.

[Ifurita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had always been curious about this book since Dorothy Sayers refers to it so often, and something recently made me go looking for it. I'm very, very glad I found it! It's a marvel of sly humor and wicked commentary about people in general. The same way I can pick up Murder Must Advertise and see parallels to workplaces I've been in, Kai Lung reminds me that human nature hasn't really changed since either book was written.
The style can be a bit difficult to get through, but it is well worth the effort. The ornate language somehow makes Bramah's observations all the more cutting. It's hard to believe I would never have heard of this book if it hadn't been for Sayers.

[Lucy Barnhouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book absolutely delightful. I was nervous about Orientalism, but didn't find, in the event, that Bramah exoticized his setting conspicuously, and insofar as Chinese culture was invoked or mentioned, it was not treated as primitive or comic. Although the diction is modeled on translations of Chinese folktales, the rollicking romance is positively Wodehousian, and the mores and social debates satirized are very clearly those of interwar Britain, where Bramah was writing. The result I found irresistibly charming.

[Valerie]

Every edition shown says that this book was 1st published in 1972. This is impossible, since Dorothy L Sayers refers to it in Busman's Honeymoon, which was set in 1935.

There must have been an earlier edition. I think I read an edition my mother had.

Anyway, my impression is that, as with most anthologies, it was uneven in quality, but I liked the language overall.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful book in which the framing narrative sets up the opportunity for the protagonist to tell a plethora of stories. Drags a bit in the middle, but enjoyable. A British book about China and over a hundred years old, so expect a little Orientalism. I absolutely love the pretentious self-abasement.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1923 collection by an author I've never heard of was great fun. Bramah was a genre writer, and a contemporary of Wells and Conan Doyle, who overshadowed him, but he is a lot of fun to read. This book is a sort of Chinese Arabian Nights - a storyteller condemned to death has to tell the judge a story every day to prolong his own life. The stories are weird and fanciful and very funny.

[smokeandsong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautiful, controlled style, and quite a sense of sarcasm. Unfortunately, it was a bit short on actual substance. It's basically a series of short stories ("folktales"), most of which are moderately interesting, but I found it hard to stay motivated to continue as each short story ended.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming, beautifully written and wickedly funny. If Saki had decided to set his stories in ancient China, they might have turned out like these. Kai Lung's Story of The Willow Plate Embellishment is one of the cleverest - and most amusing - explanations - of the origins of blue willow china.

[Auntiecatherine]

Kai Lung's golden hours by Ernest Bramah (1957)

[Alex Weinle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tapestry of stories laid within each other, wonderfully thoughtful and spun. As the wise man says, a review may be read once with disbelief but with the second time comes understanding.

[Rachel Lundwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely my favorite book of the summer so far. The writing is beautiful and imaginative and--if you pay careful attention--wickedly funny.

[meliss]

Maybe some other time. Too densely written for where my head is currently at. This book needs focused, patient reading. It's poetic prose. :)