The Dragon Empress
Download or Read eBook The Dragon Empress PDF written by Marina Warner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
| Author | : Marina Warner |
| Publisher | : Random House |
| Total Pages | : 291 |
| Release | : 2012-02-29 |
| ISBN-10 | : 9781448103164 |
| ISBN-13 | : 1448103169 |
| Rating | : 4/5 (64 Downloads) |
Book Synopsis The Dragon Empress by : Marina Warner
Book excerpt: From 1861 to 1908 a woman, the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, born the daughter of a minor mandarin, held the supreme power in China. Opportunistic, ruthless, malicious, she ruled over four hundred million people. Marina Warner's biography lays bare her complex personality: her extreme conventionalism; her hatred of "foreigners"; her passion for power and intrigue; her vanity and her delight in ritual; her extravagance and corruption and her love of gardens, painting and the theatre. THE DRAGON EMPRESS also portrays a China in rapid decline as poverty, civil war and foreign exploitation and invasion brought about the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty.
