Author(s): Shan Sa

Fiction

In seventh-century China a young girl from the humble Wu clan entered the imperial gynaecium, housing ten thousand concubines. Inside the Forbidden City, she witnessed seductions, plots, murders, and brazen acts of treason - but shrewdly masterminded her way to the ultimate position of power. From there she instigated positive reforms in government and culture. And yet, from the moment of her death to the present day, her name has been sullied, her story distorted, and her memoirs obliterated by men taking vengeance on a women who dared become Emperor. This amazing historical novelisation reveals a fascinating, complex figure who in many ways remains modern to this day. Review: "Spellbinding.... Sa's language is graceful and trance-like: her fights are a whirling choreography of flying limbs and snow, her emotions richly yet precisely expressed." -The Times (London)" First published in France 2003; this translation 2006.