![]() ![]() Pearl Buck has embroidered her story with glamorous details of the aspects of the life of the fabulous court. But once within the palace, the lust for power became her controlling guide, and nothing was allowed to divert her. She loved one man only, Jung Lu, a cousin to whom she was plighted at the time she was chosen for the weakling emperor. But as one reads this story, one feels that here is Tzu Hsi, concubine of the third rank, ambitions, beautiful, intelligent far beyond her time. Fiction has been built around her - adventure stories have used the Forbidden City and the various famous palaces as settings. ![]() Pearl, growing up in China, knew her as a figure of awe, virtually a goddess, and has here told the story-book tale of her life, from concubine to one of the world's most powerful and terrifying figures. The Empress Dowager, as the Western world knew her, is the central figure of this enthralling biographical novel told with much more authority than in a synthetics novel of 1954- Forbidden City by Muriel Jernigan, on the name theme. ![]()
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