Empress Dowager Cixi - The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

From the bestselling author of Wild Swans and Mao: The Unknown StoryIn 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 andalso 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 TimesShortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize

Product details

• Authors: Jung Chang, Chang Jung, Jung Chang
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.07.2014
• EAN: 9780099532392
• ISBN: 978-0-09-953239-2
• No. of pages: 528
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 33 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book; Chinesische SchriftstellerInnen; Werke (div.), China, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical, Biography: historical, political & military, HISTORY / Asia / China, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, Political leaders & leadership, Diplomacy, Asian History, Biography: historical, political and military, Political leaders and leadership, c 1900 to c 1909