The Dragon Empress

Author: Marina Warner

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 25.00 AUD
  • : 9780099165910
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : 27 August 1993
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  • : 38.95
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  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Marina Warner
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  • : Paperback
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  • : 272
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Barcode 9780099165910
9780099165910

Description

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.