An international bestseller about two fragile women who found the strength to stand up to the cruel customs of 19th-century China
A woman named Lily is haunted by memories – of the girl she once was, and of a long-dead friend who profoundly influenced her life.
In nineteenth-century China, where wives and daughters had bound feet and lived in almost complete isolation, the women of the remote Hunan province created their own secret “women’s” script, Nüshu. Some girls were then paired with a laotong, their “other self”, in emotional bonds that usually lasted until death. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and wrote stories through which they could escape their solitude to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments with others.
When Snow Flower sends Lily a silk fan with a text in Nüshu, their friendship is sealed, and at the tender age of seven, they become laotong. They must both face famine and the hardships of a peasant rebellion, contemplate their arranged marriages, their loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. Above all, it is their relationship, in which they find solace, that keeps both souls alive. But then a misunderstanding occurs, and a lifelong friendship is left in ruins.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan takes us back into Chinese history. This deeply moving novel will also captivate you with its realistic period colour and a hidden kinship with Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. A book filled with lyricism and emotion, it delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: the friendship between women.
