Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

Book
No Media

This item doesn’t have any media yet

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

2014 | Biography

This is from the bestselling author of Wild Swans and Mao: The Unknown Story. In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Empress Dowager Cixi - the most important woman in Chinese history - brought a medieval empire into the modern age. Under her, the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state and it was she who abolished gruesome punishments like 'death by a thousand cuts' and put an end to foot-binding. Jung Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot and also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing's Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs - with one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. Packed with drama, fast-paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world's population, and as a unique stateswoman. "Powerful". (Simon Sebag Montefiore). "Truly authoritative". (New York Times). "Wonderful". (Sunday Times).

It is shortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize.



Published by Vintage Publishing

Edition Unknown
ISBN 9780099532392
Language N/A

Images And Data Courtesy Of: Vintage Publishing.
This content (including text, images, videos and other media) is published and used in accordance with Fair Use.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China Reviews & Ratings (1)
9-10
0.0% (0)
7-8
0.0% (0)
5-6
0.0% (0)
3-4
0.0% (0)
1-2
100.0% (1)