China Trilogy

The China Trilogy follows connected foreign and Chinese families across the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the revolutionary conflicts of the Republican era and the political campaigns of the People’s Republic. The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure begins amid the Boxer Rebellion in 1899–1900; The Emperor’s Bones moves into the warlord struggles, Nationalist–Communist alliance and revolutions of the 1920s; and The Dragon’s Tail carries the story through Cold War espionage, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989.

Across the three novels, missionaries, merchants, soldiers, spies and revolutionaries confront systems larger than themselves. Williams uses romance and family continuity to examine foreign imperialism, Chinese nationalism, communist revolution and the moral compromises demanded by survival. Real events and political figures shape the characters’ lives, but the trilogy remains centred on individuals divided between cultures, loyalties and competing ideas of duty.