Publisher's Synopsis
Volume 2 of Strange Tales from the Ivory Crescent
Chasing Clouds picks up the exploration of the strange and marvellous world introduced in The Cloud Collector, the first volume of the Tales from the Ivory Crescent.
Inspired by the wonderful objects that have punctuated his long career as a scholar and expert in Chinese antiques, Marcus Flacks melds the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of a Western aesthetic education with a lifetime spent in the study and appreciation of China’s literati culture. In the resulting stories, princes fall in love, monks outwit bureaucracies and sinister covens conspire, whilst, in the wings, harried officials are forever shoring up the defences of a tottering empire. Reality and fable, antiquity and modernity and Chinese and Western thought and aesthetics combine in a heady mixture that offers the modern reader a multitude of delights, surprises and opportunities for reflection.
