Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 21 August
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Linda Jaivin is the author of five bestselling novels, including A Most Immoral Woman and the cult classic Eat Me. She’s also a renowned Chinese–English translator, and an essayist and journalist with unique insights into Chinese politics and culture.
The Empress Lover, Jaivin’s latest novel, intersperses the true story of Sir Edmund Backhouse – an eccentric baronet, sinologist, arms salesman and fantasist – with the fictional life of Linnie, an Australian translator living in contemporary Beijing. In a work that contrasts the breezy observations of an expatriate with the darker perspectives of a local, Jaivin interrogates her longstanding relationship with China and explores how the nation has evolved over the post-Tiananmen period.
With host Toni Jordan, Jaivin will discuss the book, her unique perspectives working as a translator, and her other recent project: Beijing, a portrait of the city’s unique personalities and fascinating history.
Arrive 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start.
Featuring
Linda Jaivin
Linda Jaivin is the author of the international bestselling novel Eat Me – a kind of Sex and the Sydney before there was Sex and the City – as well as six other works of fiction, many of which have been published internationally, and four critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including the China memoir Monkey and the Dragon, the Quarterly Essay Found in Translation: In Praise of a Plural World and Beijing, part of Reaktion Press's Cityscopes series and a love letter to the city to which she first travelled in 1980.
Her 2009 novel A Most Immoral Woman was based on the true story of the affair between the great Australian China correspondent George E Morrison and an American nymphomaniac heiress in China and Japan in 1904. Her latest novel, The Empress Lover, is another kind of love letter to Beijing mixed up with a mystery, a fantasy and a tragedy. The Infernal Optimist, a black comedy set in an immigration detention centre, was shortlisted for the 2007 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.
Toni Jordan
Toni Jordan is the author of the international bestseller Addition, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and adapted into a feature film, in cinemas in 2026. Her novel Nine Days was awarded Best Fiction at ...