PETAL-OF-THE-ROSE Charles Pettit Liveright ($2.50).
Not unlike Ernest Bramah's tales of Kai Lung, in its lacquered language of excessive pseudo-Oriental politeness, unlike them in the faintly lickerish tinge of the narrative, Petal-of-the-Rose gives about as realistic a picture of China as a musi-comedy does of life, affords much the same kind of titillating entertainment.
Petal-of-the-Rose was the unwanted daughter of the learned, sensual, hard-hearted aristocrat Ou Tsong Ling. Of no account in her father's eyes, she led a secluded and boring existence shut up in the women's apartments until the...
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