The Last Empress
The Sunday Age
Sunday May 13, 2007
The Last Empress
Anchee MinBloomsbury, $32.95Tzu Hsi (Cixi), dowager Empress of China, was conservative, anti-Western, even murderous - but a highly efficient politician. Anchee Min's novel is the second in a series that depicts the Empress with sympathy. Previously, Min has written on powerful Chinese women, most notably treating Jiang Ching, positively. She applied the form of the "novelised" biography to Tzu Hsi and certainly the matter was gripping. In Empress Orchid, the first book, a low-status imperial concubine gave birth to the Emperor's only son. Her consolidation of power, becoming supreme ruler of China, is the subject of The Last Empress. The romantic drama of the first book is past, but there is plenty of history. And therein lies a problem. Politics can be written about with zest, but it is difficult with this revisionist approach, in which the subject is good - and therefore uninteresting.
© 2007 The Sunday Age