Historical romances are often set in exotic locations, but not too exotic. One group of people that gets overlooked in fiction, and non-fiction, in the English-speaking world is the Uyghurs of central Asia. Central Asia itself, a land of dusty hills and sheep, gets overlooked except in fiction about Marco Polo. And right now the Uyghurs desperately need our attention and respect. They live primarily in the extreme northwest of China, where the Chinese government is trying to force them to abandon their culture and assimilate into the dominant Han culture. About a decade ago, they were in the news because China had begun re-education camps to this end.
But Stan Rice’s novel The Princess of Kashgar takes place within this neglected Asian culture.
This is the author’s summary of the novel from the Amazon website:
“Arzu is a beautiful young artist from a Uyghur village near Kashgar, on the Silk Road. She is accustomed to being admired, especially by Muhemmet, who leads a revolt against the ruling Mongol Empire. The Mongol warriors kidnap Arzu, planning to take her to Xanadu for Kublai Khan. But she and her mandarin lover Tao escape to a secret paradise in the Altai Mountains, the Valley of the Peach Blossoms. They unintentionally corrupt this paradise. Expelled, they go to Xanadu, where Arzu becomes not only Kublai’s favorite woman but also his close confidante. Only Arzu can keep the Mongols from destroying Kashgar. The Khan then wants Arzu to go back to Kashgar and assassinate Muhemmet. Still unsure if she wishes to join Muhemmet’s rebellion or obey the Khan, she finds Muhemmet and takes a dagger with her into his bedroom. Her assassination attempt fails, and the Mongols slaughter her people. When the Khan dies, Arzu and Tao flee back to the mountain paradise that may or may not accept them.”
The author has taken on a very difficult literary trope: a paradise hidden in the mountains of Asia. It is almost a cliché, which sounds like the Shangri-La of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. The Shangri-La trope is itself enough reason for some people to put down the novel without even looking at it. But wait. It all depends on how the author handles it. Hilton’s novel was not actually about the people living in Shangri-La; it was about the Europeans who fly into it in an airplane and meet a wise old man, who turns out to himself be European. The native Asian people themselves play no part in Hilton’s novel except they raise the food and provide sex. Hilton’s Lost Horizon therefore falls into the same racist category as H. Rider Haggard’s She and William Henry Hudson’s Green Mansions: a true lost paradise, whether in Hudson’s South America or Haggard’s Africa or Hilton’s Himalayas, must have begun as an outpost of white civilization. It is time for this racist trope to end. The author of Princess of Kashgar has given us an indigenous Asian paradise, based upon Chinese legend.
The novel The Princess of Kashgar has filled an overlooked spot in the map of historical romance.
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