La historia de Orquídea, una joven de familia aristocrática venida a menos que, gracias a su belleza y talento, se convertirá de simple concubina en la última emperatriz de China.
A finales del siglo XIX la dinastía Qing está viviendo sus últimos días. La habilidad política de los antiguos emperadores se ha diluido en el arcaísmo de las estructuras de gobierno y las ambiciones colonialistas europeas. Solo el esplendor de la corte de Pekín conserva el atractivo de la antigua China imperial.
Este es el paisaje que sirve de telón de fondo a la historia de Orquídea, una joven de diecisiete años perteneciente a una familia aristocrática venida a menos que, gracias a su belleza y talento innatos, y a un gran poder de seducción, se convertirá, de simple concubina, en la última emperatriz de China.
Apoyada en una recreación meticulosa y fiel de la China imperial, La ciudad prohibida es el relato de una ambición condenada por la historia y el cautivador fresco de un mundo desaparecido.
Reseña:
«Min, superviviente de la Revolución Cultural china, ha realizado una prodigiosa búsqueda de documentación para capturar los gloriosos y desesperanzados últimos días de la dinastía Qing.»
Publishers Weekly
A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, this is Anchee Min's celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao's China.
As a child, Min was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao's political operas, Min's life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world.
In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Red Azalea became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a successful, critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path. It is a hard and lonely road. She teaches herself English by watching Sesame Street, keeps herself afloat working five jobs at once, lives in unheated rooms, suffers rape, collapses from exhaustion, marries poorly and divorces.But she also gives birth to her daughter, Lauryann, who will inspire her and finally root her in her new country. Min's eventual successes-her writing career, a daughter at Stanford, a second husband she loves-are remarkable, but it is her struggle throughout toward genuine selfhood that elevates this dramatic, classic immigrant story to something powerfully universal.
An internationally best-selling author, Anchee Min draws upon her Chinese heritage to pen lush historical epics. Here she transports listeners to the Far East for a fictionalized account of acclaimed author Pearl Buck's youth. Arriving in late 19th-century China with her missionary parents, Buck is soon fascinated by her new home and strikes up a friendship with a young Chinese girl named Willow. The two become inseparable even as civil war, failed relationships, and world conflicts threaten all they hold dear.
At the end of the nineteenth century, China is rocked by humiliating foreign attacks and local rebellions. The only constant is the power wielded by one woman: the resilient, ever-resourceful Tzu Hsi, also known as Empress Orchid. Moving from the intimacy of the concubine quarters into the spotlight of the world stage, Orchid makes a dramatic metamorphosis from a strong-willed young woman to a wise political leader, who must not only face the perilous condition of her fading empire but also a series of devastating personal losses. Yearning to step aside yet growing constantly into her role, only she can hold the nation's rival factions together...
The last decades of the nineteenth century were a violent period in China's history, marked by humiliating foreign incursions and domestic rebellions and ending in the demise of the Ch'ing Dynasty. The only constant during this tumultuous time was the power wielded by one woman, the resilient, ever-resourceful Tsu Hsi -- or Empress Orchid, as readers came to know her in Anchee Min's critically acclaimed, best-selling novel covering her rise to power. The Last Empress is the story of Orchid's dramatic transition from a strong-willed, instinctive young woman to a wise and politically savvy leader who ruled China for more than four decades. In this concluding volume Min gives us a compelling, very human leader who assumed power reluctantly and sacrificed all to protect those she loved and an empire that was doomed to die.
The critically acclaimed author, Anchee Min, paints a fresh portrait of the last Chinese empress in this brilliantly fictionalized tale set during the waning days of the empire. Seventeen-year-old Orchid belongs to an aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times. Unexpectedly, she is chosen as one of the emperor's lesser concubines. Within the Forbidden City are thousands of women hoping to bear the emperor a son and become his empress. Orchid, determined and resourceful, schemes her way into the royal bed and seduces the emperor. But as the opium trade erodes the might of the Ch'ing dynasty, Orchid find herself at the center of a crumbling nation. A colorful depiction of one of history's least understood women, The Empress Orchid is another enthralling masterpiece for Anchee Min.
