Author(s): Kingston Maxine Hong

Mind/Body/Spirit

By the author of the bestselling Woman Warrior, a magical book of peace built on the stories of war.The Fifth Book of Peace begins as the author is driving home from her father's funeral and finds the exit to her neighbourhood blocked; a firestorm is devouring the Berkeley hills, including her house and all her earthly possessions, and most significantly the novel, The Fourth Book of Peace, that she has been working on. In this extraordinary book, The Fifth Book of Peace, Kingston descibes the history of all the lost books of peace - both the three that figure in Chinese mythology, which scholars and laymen have searched for, hoping to find in them the antidote to The Art of War, and her own book, lost in the flames.Divided into four sections - 'Fire', 'Paper', 'Water' and 'Earth' - this book is neither fiction nor autobiography nor memoir, but a unique form of Chinese 'talk-story' in which real and imagined worlds intrude upon and enrich one another. From the anti-war protests in Hawaii to Kingston's own conversations with Vietnam veterans, the author takes us inside the hearts and minds of a host of characters, not least of whom is her own Mama, the veteran woman warrior Brave Orchid, who watches over her in the seminal years of rebuilding following the fire and her father's death.