{"product_id":"empress-dowager-cixi","title":"Empress Dowager Cixi","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the bestselling author of Wild Swans and Mao: The Unknown Story\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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 andalso 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePacked 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Powerful’ Simon Sebag Montefiore\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Truly authoritative’ New York Times\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Wonderful’ Sunday Times\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PRHD Penguin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45508968382687,"sku":"9780099532392","price":30.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0685\/2185\/3151\/files\/9780099532392.jpg?v=1744080938","url":"https:\/\/lamplightbooks.pro\/products\/empress-dowager-cixi","provider":"Lamplight Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}