The Dragon Empress

Zusatztext

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.

Autorenportrait

<p>Marina Warner was born in London of an Italian mother and an English father. Her history and criticism has focused mainly on female symbolism -<i>Alone of All Her Sex: the Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary; Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism; Monuments and Maidens: the Allegory of the Female Form -</i>and is currently finishing a study of fairytale, called<i>From The Beast to The Blonde.</i>She has also written novels.<i>The Lost Father</i>was a Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and winner of the Macmillan Silver P.E.N Award. She has recently published<i>The Mermaids in the Basement</i>her first collection of short stories.</p><p>She lives in London with her husband, the artist John Dewe Mathews, and one son.</p>

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