A Character’s Autobiography from the Taiping Era

In an age called “Peaceful Years,” no one knows peace. This is a history without a protagonist, told through countless lives struggling to survive in an era of upheaval.

The Biographies of the Peaceful Years uses a distinctive biographical format to present more than thirty independent stories about real and fictional figures from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. One chapter per person, each between 4,000 and 10,000 words, they come together to piece out a blood-soaked portrait of tenth-century China.

This book has no central plot and offers no definitive answers.

It is like a museum of Five Dynasties figures, with each display case holding one person’s life. Readers can linger wherever they like and begin with any story, gradually piecing together the full picture of the era for themselves.