Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together.
In this "absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao" (New York Times), readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min's lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world.

In 1957, Anchee Min was born in Shanghai. She was sent to a labor collective at the age of seventeen, where she was discovered by a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio and hired as a movie actor. With the support of actress Joan Chen, she immigrated to the United States in 1984. Her memoir, Red Azalea, was named a New York Times Notable Book in 1994 and earned the Carl Sandburg Literary Prize in 1993. Becoming Madame Mao, Empress Orchid, Katherine, and Wild Ginger are among Min's other works.