The Magpie Bridge

A love story spanning two cultures . . .

When Jiao Mei is woken in her London bedroom by a woman claiming to be her grandmother, she dismisses the encounter as a vivid dream. What with the stress of impending examinations, her unshakeable lethargy and homesick cravings for Sichuan food, lately she's be something of a stranger to herself.

But as Barbara, with whom she lodges, grows disturbingly eccentric, and the atmosphere of their Hampstead home ever stranger, Jiao Mei must accept hat her night-time visitor is indeed who she claims to be, and that her message - that Jiao Mei is carrying her British boyfriend's child - is one she can no longer ignore.

Meanwhile Tie Mei, Jiao Mei's grandmother, has other business in London: centuries-old scores to settle, which will affect those closest to Jiao Mei. Shocked into confronting her complex heritage, Jiao Mei begins to unlock the secrets that have eaten away at the bonds between her family.

Unfolding between the Imperial Gardens of nineteenth-century Beijing, and those of London today, 'The Magpie Bridge' weaves a story of the lives of three generations of women that is also a tale of England's infatuation with China. It is a novel as beautifully observed as it is powerfully imagined.