Product Description

In 1851, a sixteen-year-old girl named Yehonala entered the Imperial Palace of China as a concubine third grade, leaving behind her family, the love of her life, and nearly all contact with the outside world. She emerged as Tsu Hsi, Dowager Empress of China and one of the most powerful autocrats in history. A fascinating tale of love, betrayal, murder, intrigue, and survival, The Last Empress offers remarkable insight into life behind the closed doors of the forbidden city.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #747176 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-02
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 316 pages

Review
"...a fascinating story..." (Publishing News, 19 July 2002) 

"…Laidler’s book is meticulously researched and covers a fascinating period in Chinese history…" (The Times, 12 April 2003)

"…Keith Laidler’s absorbing new history of 19th century China…" (Daily Mail, 18 April 2003)

'…an engaging history of nineteenth-century court politics...' (Time Literary Supplement. 30 May 2003)

"…a bloody, intense and absorbingly written story…" (Good Book Guide, June 2003)

‘Laidler has written a page-turner of a book…’ (The Asian Review of Books, 30 June 2003)

From the Inside Flap
When Yehonala entered the Forbidden City in 1851 she entered a feudal world in which the Manchu Emperor ruled all under heaven and China basked in a deluded belief in its own superiority. Foreigners were viewed as uncultivated barbarians and their ambassadors deemed mere tribute bearers. The Industrial Revolution, the hunger for trade and the Imperialism of the Western powers had passed China by. An approximate contemporary of Queen Victoria, Yehonala lived in a different world.

By the end of Yehonala?s reign, over fifty years later, China?s preconceptions and wealth had been all but destroyed by the invasion of Western powers in pursuit of trade. Shortly after Yehanola?s death, the Manchu Dynasty collapsed and China entered a long period of chaos. This book charts not only the life of an extraordinary woman, but also a clash of ideologies that led to the near destruction of a noble and ancient, if also at times, terrible, culture.

From the Back Cover
In 1856 Emperor Hsien Feng turned over an ornately carved jade name-plaque next to his bedchamber, an action with which he brought a much-desired new concubine to his bed and unwittingly sealed the fate of the Manchu dynasty. A centuries-old prophecy had foretold that Manchu rule in China would be brought to ruin by a woman from the Yeho-Nala tribe; in the darkness of the bedchamber those words became reality. The Emperor was entranced with the young woman he had chosen, and from that time her power over him was ensured. Her name was Yehonala.

Forced to enter the Forbidden City at the age of sixteen Yehonala lost her family, her betrothed and the life she had sought. She was entering a world of opulence, scholarship, intrigue and power struggles; a world that had remained for centuries untouched by the outside world or the passing of time, ruled by etiquette and tradition but with danger in every word or gesture. The beautiful young girl proved herself equal to all the court. She rose to be one of the greatest female autocrats in history, the most powerful person in China, maintaining her power with a mixture of seduction, intrigue, manipulation and even murder.