A House Divided

Wang Yuan grows up under the authority of Wang the Tiger, the soldier who turned himself into a powerful general. Uncomfortable with the military future chosen for him, Yuan moves among students and revolutionaries before leaving China to study agriculture in the United States. Distance gives him a new education but no simple answer to the competing claims of his father, his family and the country he expects to serve.

On returning after six years, Yuan finds that political repression, armed revolt and generational rebellion have intensified. His American experience separates him from inherited customs without making him fully Western, while relationships with women expose the limits of both family arrangement and revolutionary idealism. The trilogy closes with a young man trying to define loyalty in a China where the old household and the new political movements are both fractured.