La Provence
“A novel where encyclopaedic knowledge and narrative fantasy blend. Six hundred pages of dynamite, in which the author has drawn on real events to write a relentless thriller that helps us understand the complex reality of Chinese power. A journalist, war reporter and presenter of Jornal das 8 in Portugal, J.R. dos Santos (who speaks fluent French) has established himself as one of the world’s leading erudite thriller writers in Europe and the US. In many ways, he belongs to the novelistic family of Umberto Eco and his impressive Foucault’s Pendulum, with the difference, and it is a big difference, that J.R. dos Santos is not, like his Italian counterpart, a Genghis Khan of the novel, crushing the reader under the weight of his knowledge.
On the contrary, his pedagogical writing leaves no one without understanding the story, and it is an immense pleasure to immerse oneself in this narrative that dissects China’s millennial strategy (…) The way the author sets up his plot is disturbing because these are successive portraits that he traces with a broad-tipped pen fed with incisive dialogues. The highly visual, almost cinematic writing brings out whole shots of a world that is oh so unsettling, exceptional in dramaturgy reminiscent of an ancient drama. The weight of fatum is present in filigree to shake us and make us reflect on the world as it should be.”
