The Red Thread - Softcover

The Red Thread, set in contemporary Shanghai, is a love story and a skilled implicit defence of art. Shen Fu works at the first art auction house to open in Shanghai in recent times. An old man brings him an antique manuscript entitled "Six Chapters of the Floating World" to put up for auction. The last two chapters are missing. Shen begins reading the book and becomes so engrossed that he pulls it from the auction. He meets a young Australian artist named Ruth, who has moved to China as a result of a terminal-illness diagnosis. Ruth paints in

the traditional style known as exquisite brush ... In each picture there was a contrast between a traditional element and something contemporary. A black and orange butterfly alighting on a computer screen ... A tiny gold Buddha sitting beside an ultrasound scanner that showed the shadowy form of an unborn child. The past and the present juxtaposed. Creation and destruction. Nature and technology. Contending powers. Yin and Yang. Each picture was stamped with a red seal.

The style and concerns of Nicholas Jose's novel are neatly encapsulated in Ruth's art. Ruth and Shen embark on a quest to find the missing two chapters of the manuscript. Their love-story becomes interwoven with the plot of the manuscript. Past and present blur, truth and fiction merge in a Jose's multi-layered description of art as love and love as art. Jose's previous works include The Custodians and Chinese Whispers, in which he traverses the globe from Europe to Asia to the Australian outback.

Nicholas Jose was born in 1952, in London of South Australian parents, and grew up in Broken Hill, Traralgon, Perth and Adelaide. He was educated in South Australia and at the Australian National University, Canberra and Oxford University. He has travelled widely, and has lived and worked in Italy, England, Australia and China. In 1986-1987 he was attached to the Australian Studies Centre at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and East China Normal University, Shanghai. From 1987 to 1990 he was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy, Beijing.$$$The Red Thread is Nicholas Jose's sixth novel. The Custodians was published in July 1997 by Picador and was described by Jane Campion as 'an intimate, risk-taking portrait'.$$$His other novels include The Rose Crossing (published in the USA, Germany, France, China and Japan), Rowena's Field, Paper Nautilus and Avenue of Eternal Peace, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize in 1990 and adapted into the mini-series Children of the Dragon. Nicholas Jose has also published two collections of short stories - The Possession of Amber and Feathers or Lead.$$$Jose co-translated The Finish Line by Sang Ye, a book of bike rides across China and Australia, and The Ape Herd by Mang Ke. Other recent projects include co-editing Picador New Writing, and a play, Dead City, in a Q Theatre production. He has also published a collection of essays - Chinese Whispers.$$$Nicholas Jose was curatorial advisor on the exhibition projects 'Mao Goes Pop' (1993) and 'Arttaiwan' (1995) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and co-edited Arttaiwan with Yang Wen-i. He has written widely on contemporary Asian and Australian culture.