Mustard Seed Itinerary

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A political satire, half Lewis Carroll, half traditional Daoist literature, about a modern-day Chinese schoolteacher who falls into an alcoholic sleep and dreams himself back a thousand years, rising through the ranks of the imperial civil service until he achieves the position of Prime Minister-and then finds himself stranded.All roads leads to the celestial city, and when schoolmaster Po Cheng drinks too much and falls into a dream, he finds himself on just such a road. Assisted by teaching colleague Miss Ling, Po Cheng reaches the imperial capital, rising up through the giddy ranks of the Chinese civil service to become Prime Minister. Good fortune appears endless, not least when Miss Ling reappears in his life as an artist's model who has changed her name to Precious Pearl so she can pose in the Forest of Brushes Academy of Art without her parents finding out. But what Heaven - and alcohol - give, they can also claw back. With trouble brewing inside and outside the city walls, Po Cheng's career and life seem fated, and he must now take the inevitable consequences of his rise to fame and power. Mustard Seed Itinerary is a brilliant first novel by an important new voice, bringing to the formal conventions of traditional Chinese literature the wry humour of a Carrollian satirist. As Mullen says, "In Daoism and Buddhism, dream journeys serve as voyages of discovery from which only a blockhead would return none the wiser. And Po Cheng is no blockhead."