Flashman and the Dragon (The Flashman Papers) - Softcover

George MacDonald Fraser

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006513034 ISBN 13: 9780006513032

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999

Synopsis

Celebrated Victorian bounder, cad, and lecher, Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., returns to play his (reluctant) part in the Taiping Rebellion in the eighth volume of the critically acclaimed Flashman Papers. Unfortunately in China in 1860 a lot of people were depending on Flashman: the English vicar's daughter with her cargo of opium; Lord Elgin; the Emperor's ravishing concubine; and Szu-Zhan, the female bandit colossus, as practised in the arts of love as in the art of war. They were not to know that behind his Victoria Cross, Flashman was a base coward and charlatan. They took him at face value, and he took them for all he could, while China seethed through the bloodiest civil war in history, and the British and French armies hacked their way to the heart of the Forbidden City.

About this title

About the Author

The author of the famous 'Flashman Papers' and the 'Private McAuslan' stories, George MacDonald Fraser has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada. In addition to his novels he has also written numerous films, most notably 'The Three Musketeers', 'The Four Musketeers', and the James Bond film, 'Octopussy'.

From Publishers Weekly

The delightful cad Flashman stalks again, now through China's 19th-century Taiping Rebellion, in this eighth and perhaps most sparkling volume of his "memoirs." Though a little longer in the tooth, Colonel Flashman, V.C., has lost none of his dash, cunning, amorous propensity or cowardice. His adventures begin when he accompanies a consignment of "opium" (actually guns) to Canton on behalf of a British missionary. Thereafter, as Ambassador Elgin's chief intelligence officer, he gets into a succession of dire scrapes which include being attacked by pirates and falling into the hands first of the ferocious but disciplined Taipings, then of the equally ferocious but decadent Manchu imperialists. At one point he comes within a hair's breadth of having his poltroonery exposed; at other points he finds himself the sexual partner of a Chinese Amazon and, more plaything than partner, of the formidable Imperial Concubine Yi, later empress, to whose treacherous court intrigues he becomes privy. He winds up witnessing Elgin's destruction of Peking's Summer Palace, an act of vengeance described with horrifying vividness. There's a deal of shrewd observation in Flashman, and a deal of solid history in his flamboyant memoirs, factors that add weight to their dazzle.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0006513034
• ISBN 13: 9780006513032
• Binding: Paperback