So if you don’t know José Frèches, a little presentation is essential before telling you about his latest novel “La main du Bouddha”. He is a French writer born in Dax. He has always been passionate about china and in 2010 will be responsible for the French pavilion at the Shanghai World Fair. He had a career in communication and audiovisual. And he’s written many novels set in millennial china that are bestselling books.
These stories regularly cycle which bring together several volumes such as the Jade disc or the silk empress. This is also the case here. José Frèches tells us “To understand the present, you have to know the past”. So her new cycle is called “the mysteries of China”. He started it in 2019 with “The Little Silk Thief”. Here is the second part, “La main du Boudha”. And no need to have read the first to navigate, the two stories are not linked.
In this last novel, José Frèches wanted to tell in his own way how this Indian religion was established in China especially by the Silk Road. We are going with him to open the doors of the mysterious monastery of the hair. What we appreciate about this story is that the characters come straight out of the imagination of José Frèches but for the context it is extremely precise and don’t invent anything. We will thus follow in the fifth century of our era a bloodthirsty wren, a princess in love with a young Christian, a Taoist leader, a former prostitute who is maturing a vengeance, as much to tell you of the colorful heroes who will marvelously incarnate this story. .
What is striking is to note that even in this country which was completely impervious to change especially when ideas came from abroad, this religion managed to find an echo. The writing is that ofa fresco that we devour, we want to know what will happen, the twists are numerous. It’s addicting like a Netflix series.