History becomes her story

Novelist Amy Tan is arguably one of the most-read, and most influential, English-language novelists dealing with the topics of Chinese culture, mores and relationships. Mark Graham / for China Daily

Almost a decade in the making, Amy Tan's new book was inspired by an old photo and her family's past, writes Mark Graham.

Novelist Amy Tan is known for taking her time with each book - insisting on extensive research, meticulous plotting and evocative finely tuned prose - so a new work by the respected Chinese-American is always a significant publishing event.

Her just-released book, The Valley of Amazement, has had a particularly long gestation period, partly because it involved extensive digging into the Tan family history. Her research turned up some surprising information, and partly because the author was sidetracked by various other projects, including writing the libretto for an opera production of an earlier book.

The Valley of Amazement revisits the kind of themes that Tan has explored so well in previous books, becoming arguably one of the most-read, and most influential, English-language novelists dealing with the topics of Chinese culture, mores and relationships. She is certainly among the most successful in terms of sales: The Joy Luck Club, her debut work, was a huge best-seller, giving Western audiences insights into the way Chinese family dynamics operate.

The book was originally inspired by stories her mother relayed about growing up in China. The American-born author was spellbound to hear of stories of life during turbulent times - and was inspired to make a personal visit to the places most closely associated with her extended family.

Material acquired from those trips was combined with a fertile imagination and a fluid writing style. Inspiration for the latest work came during one of Tan's periodic delves into the family tree and making the shock discovery that her grandmother, who lived in Shanghai during the earlier part of the last century, may have been a concubine - one of the wives of a rich man - and could well have taken her own life.

Incomplete documentation from that era makes it hard to absolutely verify the facts, and some members of the extended family are not necessarily keen to focus on uncomfortable truths. But the information she discovered was enough to set Tan thinking, imagining and plotting.