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Flashman and the Dragon
Book 8 in the The Flashman Papers series.
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In Hong Kong in 1860, Flashman accepts money to escort what he believes is an opium shipment into Canton and discovers that he is carrying weapons for the Taiping rebels. British officials convert his attempt to escape blame into an intelligence mission, sending him through Shanghai and Nanjing to assess whether the Taiping armies threaten foreign interests.
Flashman then joins Lord Elgin’s expedition towards Beijing during the final campaign of the Second Opium War. Captured by Qing forces, he enters the orbit of the Xianfeng Emperor and the concubine who will become Empress Dowager Cixi before witnessing the allied occupation and destruction of the Old Summer Palace. The novel places civil war and foreign invasion inside the same collapsing imperial landscape.
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