Home LiteratureGiveaway-A-Day #2: The Painted Cage
Giveaway-A-Day #2: The Painted Cage

Giveaway-A-Day #2: The Painted Cage

Meira Chand is of Indian-Swiss parentage, was born and educated in London, lived for many years in Japan with her Indian husband, and now resides in Singapore. Her multi-cultural heritage, married to her remarkable literary gift for storytelling drawn from history, help to explain why she has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as the ‘master of the modern Asian epic.’

Girl sitting in garden reading book by Meria Chand

Based on a true story, Chand’s The Painted Cage was acclaimed by the TLS as ‘beautiful’ and as Chand’s ‘most substantial achievement.’ It explores the tragedy of a Victorian woman who becomes the victim of her own sensuality. In Yokohama, Japan, on the morning of January 5th 1897, the trial begins of Amy Redmore, charged with the murder of her husband Reggie, ex-secretary of the Yokohama United Club. Marriage had transported Amy – an heiress 15 years her husband’s junior – from the green fields of Somerset, and along the way she discovered disturbing truths about Reggie: his mistress and secret child, his addiction to arsenic. In colonial Yokohama the couple began to lead separate lives, with fatal consequences.

We have one copy of The Painted Cage to give away to the winner of our quiz. To win, first take a look at the following question:

Yokohama became known the world over as Japan’s great port city after the ‘opening to the West’ of 1854 – which is why it is one of the many locations in which famous novel by Jules Verne?