An American woman comes to China to teach English just as that country opens its doors, six years after the deal of Chairman Mao. Her clothes, her hair, her charm - the stories she tells of an American childhood, the lessons in casual conversation and pop music - awaken in the men and women she tutors a yearning for the tantalizing West and an unknowable eroticism.

She is a witting and unwitting seductress who cannot conceive that when she enters into a love triangle with two of her students - one male, one female - its consequences will be insidious and inexorably tragic. In Katherine, Min writes of the clash of centuries-old mystical traditions and modern American ways, of love and betrayal, and of both the balm and destruction obsession offers. Anchee Min's fiction debut confirms her arrival as a writer of singular importance.