BRAND NEW Please allow 4-7 working days for delivery This item is shipped from our NZ warehouse

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched M by Jung Chang

ISBN: 9780099532392 PUBLISHER: Vintage FORMAT: Paperback PAGES: 464 PUBLICATION DATE: 3.07.2014 DIMENSIONS: 198mmX129mmX31mm 437grams

DESCRIPTION: 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.

• Orders after Monday 12th cannot be guaranteed for Christmas
• Dispatch warehouse is closed from 12pm 23rd Dec - Friday 6th Jan any orders during this time will be dispatched Monday 9th Jan
• In Stock with our supplier shipped from our NZ Warehouse
• If using business address pls use PO Box as do not use courier