The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan Spence

The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan Spence

In The Death of Woman Wang the award-winning historian Jonathan Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure time and place: provincial China in the late 17th century. Drawing on a range of sources, including local Chinese histories, the memoirs of scholars and other contemporary writings, Spence reconstructs an extraordinary tale of rural tragedy in a remote corner of the northeastern Chinese province of Shantung. Life in the county of T'an-ch'eng emerges as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. The Death of Woman Wang not only magnificently evokes the China of the late Ming period, but also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.

Spence shows himself at once historian, detective and artist..He makes history howl. Unforgettable - The New Republic Whether judged as fiction or as historical reconstruction, this is a masterpiece of style and narration - Harold Bloom

Jonathan Spence is the author of more than a dozen books on China, including the Gate of Heavenly Peace, The Search for Modern China, Mao Zedong and God's Chinese Son (a magisterial study of the Taiping rebellion of the mid-19th century). A Sterling Professor of History at Yale, he is a past president of the American Historical Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Westhaven, Connecticut.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781847243423
ISBN 10	1847243428
Title	The Death of Woman Wang
Author	Jonathan Spence
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Quercus Publishing
Year published	2008-01-08
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.