Book
The Sinews of Love
First published 1965
Ming Pei Sha is orphaned by disaster and pushed into a life shaped by poverty, family obligation and forced marriage. His path leads into nineteenth-century Hong Kong, where Chinese communities live beside the banks, trading houses and imperial institutions that have transformed the port into one of Britain’s most important Asian possessions.
Cordell contrasts wealth and deprivation without treating Hong Kong as a simple meeting point of East and West. Traditional expectations, commercial modernity and colonial inequality all place pressure on intimate relationships. The novel draws on Cordell’s own familiarity with Hong Kong to make the city’s crowded streets, finance and social divisions integral to a story about whether affection can survive obligations imposed by family and money.
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