José Frèches (born 25 June 1950, in Dax, Landes) is a French historical novelist with novels set in China. His first trilogy The Jade Disk is a story, set during the Warring States period in disunited China. It tells the story of the character of the rich merchant and eventual prime-minister Lü Buwei - real father of the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang. It portrays the struggles between the other kingdoms and Kingdom of Qin, destined to unite China. His second trilogy The Empress of Silk is set in Medieval China during the Tang dynasty. It depicts the story of Emperor Gaozong, the third emperor of Tang and his prominent and ambitious wife Wu Zetian, who, after his death, virtually became the ruler of the country and the only ruling empress in the history of China. His latest series The Empire of Tears is set in mid-19th-century China, at the time of the First and Second Opium Wars, when the Qing dynasty is struggling and slowly decaying. Source: Article "José Frèches" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.