Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, published by Corgi Books New York in 1984. I am reading it because I am scratchy, miserable, overworked and tired, and my household machines have undergone a Major Extinction Event, beginning with the toaster firing bread at the cat, through to the microwave, the vacuum cleaner (though that might have been the pigeon feathers) the television fading sadly way and my dearly loved old Mac dying slowly, starting with my emails, all of which are gone as if I had never had a friend in the world.

What a woman needs in those circumstances is Bridge of Birds: A Novel of Ancient China That Never Was, which is the most engrossing secondary reality I have ever read, and I have been reading fantasy since I was eight. Earlier if you count fairy stories, which this is, sort of …