Kai Lung’s Golden Hours (1922). English author Ernest Bramah wrote several collections of stories that feature his droll storyteller, Kai Lung, beginning with The Wallet of Kai Lung and followed by Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, and then by Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat and Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree. They are all set in a China created entirely from Bramah’s own imagination (since he never once even visited the country), a misty landscape rife with sly dragons, ferocious bandits, wily mandarins, and beguiling maidens continually placed into dramatic circumstances that always offer his titular hero yet another chance to spin a tale studded with small delights and exquisite language.

On first reading, I simply fell head over heels into Bramah’s world, and my imagination still patiently treads its subtle paths.

—Charles Vess.