VAN GULIK, Robert.

£500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Chinese Nail Murders. An uncorrected proof copy of this popular detective story set in Tang China. It is stamped on the front free endpaper by the copyright department of Tuttle Publishing, who published a posthumous edition of van Gulik's The Lore of the Chinese Lute in 1969.Robert van Gulik (1910-1967) was a Dutch diplomat, musician, writer, and orientalist with a particular interest in Imperial China. He spent the Second World War as secretary for the Dutch mission to the Nationalist government in Chonqing, where he met his future wife. He was also posted widely to Japan, India, and Malaysia. While in Japan in 1949 he published his first book, a translation of The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (ch. Di Gong An) based on a copy he found in a second-hand book store in Tokyo. He used this work as inspiration for his own detective series, The Judge Dee Mysteries, of which this volume is the fifth (at one point intended to be final) entry.Gulik's long association with Japan was likely the reason Tuttle, based in Vermont and Tokyo, received the proof. It is unknown whether there were plans for this publisher to release any editions of The Judge Dee Mysteries, although they did publish a posthumous edition of Gulik's essay The Lore of the Chinese Lute in 1969.Gulik's novels are loosely based on Chinese legends and stories from the gong'an crime-fiction genre, although he adapted their structure to a style that Western readers would recognize. "His combination of various generi

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.