Book Review - The Yellow Emperor's Cure By Kunal Basu

I bought the book, mainly because the stall keepers at the book fair in Kolkata highly recommended this book. Had I read the synopsis on the book sleeve, I might not have purchased it. That said, I decided to give Kunal Basu a try, for I had heard good reviews about his Japanese wife.

The book is set in late 19^th century. The protagonist is a brilliant, handsome, and flamboyant Portugese doctor, Doctor Antonio Maria, who lives in Lisbon. The book starts with a good depiction of his lifestyle, his deep friendship with Ricardo, and his unfaltering love for his father. Kunal Basu describes the lives and colors of Lisbon quite well and the first few chapters went quite quickly for me.  

Dr. Maria discovers that his dearest father, also a doctor, is afflicted with syphilis and he sees him wasting away in the last stages of the disease. Completely distraught and feeling helpless without a cure, he is dismayed with the lack of cure for this horrible disease. In his anguish, he finds out that this disease is not usually seen in China and hopes that the Chinese must have a cure. He sets off to China, in search of a cure, even if it may not be in time to cure his father.

The novel still sounded promising, as this young bachelor doctor sets sail to China, to start his long and arduous search for the cure. Basu describes well how the doctor adjusts to this entirely foreign world of strange customs, peculiar foods and eating habits, invisible royalty, and eunuchs. In his quest for a cure, the doctor finds himself in the middle of the boxer rebellion, the cultural movement that rose from the ashes of the Opium Wars. The rebels waged a war against foreigners and their assistants as well as Chinese converts (to Christianity). Basu interlaces the story with history, mystery, overt love, and violent culture clashes. He has certainly done his research, for we learn a bit about history of China in late 19^th century, the food, eating styles, ways of the royalty etc.. The style of writing and handling of the language also make for easy reading.

But, somewhere in the last third of the book, the book begins to pall. I felt that the author lost interest and focus and was meandering quite a bit. The protagonist himself seemed to have lost his focus on his mission of finding a cure. (That perhaps could be explained away with the emotional turmoils he was put through.) The author carries until the very last few pages the mystery of the cure, the secrets behind his lovely Nei-Ching teacher Fumi ,who the doctor falls hopelessly in love with, and the truth behind the murder of her first mentor. The reader is made to fully believe that the three are somehow connected. While the reader’s curiosity peaked for there are but a few pages left, the author seemed have to run out of steam, said “meh” and just wanted to end the book regardless of how insipid the ending might be. The ending was certainly a big let-down for me.

All in all, I felt the author’s focus, energy level, even his delving into history were not consistent through the book. His weaving in and out between the doctor’s nightmares and real events were also confusing in some places.