Bondmaid (Paperback)

At the age of four, Han, a young woman born into dire poverty in 1950s Singapore, is sold as a slave to the wealthy house of Wu. Forming a close bond with the young Wu heir, Han's childhood attachment grows into a bittersweet existence of frustrated love and passion. As their love becomes a struggle against the forces of tradition and tyranny, author Catherine Lim evocatively captures the ethos of a wealthy and powerful Chinese household in an era of breathtaking beauty and shocking brutality. This novel tells the moving story of Han, aged four and the youngest daughter of an impoverished family. Sold as a slave into the House of Wu, she quickly forms a close bond with the young heir, but the idyll of childhood attachment quickly turns into a nightmare of frustrated passion as Han reaches her teens - beautiful, proud and in love with the young master. Her life becomes a struggle against the forces of tradition and tyranny in a world where lustful male relatives use bondmaids for indiscriminate pleasure, visiting monks devise ingenious schemes to combine holy public duty with unbridled private indulgence, and gods and goddesses, with careless insouciance, smile to see the human drama unfold.