These Violent Delights

Chloe Gong was born in Shanghai, China. When she was two years old, she and her family moved to Auckland, New Zealand. Gong began writing novels while growing up, often writing chapters in the Notes app on her iPad. She then went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied English and International Relations. Gong wrote the draft of what would become her first published book, These Violent Delights, in the summer after her first year of college. The book is a retelling of the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet and is set in Shanghai in the 1920s. That novel was then published in 2020, while Gong was still a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Gong has gone on to write several other books, including a sequel to These Violent Delights titled Our Violent Ends. Gong has also written a spinoff series of the These Violent Delights series, featuring the character of Rosalind. That series is a duology and is called the Foul Lady Fortune Series. Additionally, Gong has written a fantasy series called the Flesh and False Gods Series.

These Violent Delights explores themes related to European imperialism in China and the impacts of the Opium Wars in particular. The first Opium War lasted from 1839 to 1842. In 1839, the Chinese government outlawed opium in China and destroyed stockpiles of opium held by the British East India Company. In response, the British government sent military forces in an effort to make China repeal the prohibition of opium and force China to repay the British East India Company for the opium it destroyed. The war ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanjing, which is considered one of the “unequal treaties” because it significantly favors British interests over Chinese interests. The Second Opium War occurred from 1856 to 1860. In 1856, China sought to end the illegal trade of opium. Though opium was outlawed, many people still bought and sold the drug. In response, the British and French sent military forces to China in another attempt to force China to legalize opium. That war ended with the Convention of Peking, a set of three more unequal treaties. The novel then shows the impacts of that European imperialism, as the villain of the novel, Paul, is a British merchant who unleashes a deadly, madness-inducing plague in Shanghai to create more favorable business conditions for his father to sell opiates. These Violent Delights also explores the tension between the Nationalist and Communist Parties in the 1920s in China. Those tensions would continue to mount and ultimately result in the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, which occurred in 1927, one year after the novel takes place. The war was fought between the Kuomintang Party (the Nationalist Party in the book) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The conflict ended in 1949, when the CCP won the war and took control of China.

These Violent Delights is the first book in a duology. The second book in the series, Our Violent Ends, picks up where the action of These Violent Delights ends. Gong has also written a spinoff series to the These Violent Delights Series. In that spinoff series, Rosalind from These Violent Delights is the main character. There are two novels in that series, Foul Lady Fortune and Foul Heart Huntsman. These Violent Delights is a retelling of the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. Gong has also based some of her other novels on Shakespeare plays, including Foul Lady Fortune, which is based on Shakespeare’s As You Like It. These Violent Delights also touches on themes of European imperialism in China related to the opium trade and the opium wars. Several of R.F. Kuang’s books explore similar themes, including Babel and the Poppy War trilogy. Gong has also cited several YA books and authors as influences on her work, including Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, the Divergent Series by Veronica Roth, the Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater, and the These Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare.