First Published 1958 by Jonathan Cape, hardcover. The jacket is tatty with some loss to the spine and on the folds, with wear, creasing and rubbing. The reverse of the jacket displays a different design for this book, plain brown with white lettering. The outer marbled boards are clean with only very light wear to corners and edges, although the spine edges are beginning to fray. The spine is slightly cocked. The first free end paper has the remnant of a name written on it in pencil, and a date. The pages are clean and undamaged, apart from some small and very light staining spots on the collective edges, and brown discolouration to the tops. From Kirkus Reviews:
Han Suyin's A Many Splendored Thing enchanted many readers, who found it at the same time disturbingly frank. She has here gone far beyond the bounds an Occidental would set. And yet again- in exploring the many facets of love and passion- no holds barred- she has done it with such exquisite sensitivity, that readers who would find it shocking in less adroitly gifted expression, will here blanch momentarily, but read on. In Western terms of behavior, this is a completely amoral book. But in the penetration of another civilization, that of modern Nepal at the time of the Coronation ceremonies (which many of us saw on the cinerama screen) it is an extraordinary blend of the pagan Orient and Western impact. The story centers around an English writer, a coldly remote beauty, whose bumbling husband is insistently uxorious without success. Her writing has reached an impasse, and she applies- and receives an appointment- as English mistress in a mission school at Khatmandu. The very name held magic and the place itself with its aura of a past civilization broke through her defenses. But it was when she fell in love with a Nepalese, an engineer, that those defenses really fell- and the pent up passions of a lifetime broke through. It is a strange love story, with many threads involving loyalties to traditions, consecration to responsibilities- human and otherwise, and complete dedication to emotional demands. And the whole is told in turgid flow of words, exploring whole philosophies of thought and feeling, against the dramatic backdrop of this mountain kingdom at the base of the Himalayas, at a time when the hordes of the West were invading its sanctity and an ancient and pagan ceremony was in preparation.
