Under Fishbone Clouds, By Sam Meekings

Lavishly imagined and skilfully narrated, this family saga of life in China between 1946 and the millennium moves, informs and satisfies.

Meekings, who lives in China, filters the flood of post-revolution history through the ordeals of Jinyi and Yuying, around whose household characters, legends and histories cluster in richly painted panels set in landmark years.

The observing Kitchen God, a "common household deity", aligns their era with the time of myth, in "a story of quiet faith" that still burns with the fires of change.