The first emperor of China dispatched expeditions to the world’s far corners with a life-and-death task: find and bring back the elixir of immortality. Most famous among these explorers was a Taoist priest named Xu Fu, who sailed into the Eastern Seas. Xu Fu and his fleet vanished. Some legends say he settled in Japan. In Tim McGirk’s novel, Xu Fu goes beyond Japan, traversing the Pacific Ocean and landing upon the shores of the land of the May
