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.
