I am fascinated with strong female characters, real-life or fictitious. So it is no wonder this book caught my attention when it was first published in 2013. Unfortunately with time constraints, it wasn’t until the paperback was released that it found its way into my home.

Title:               Empress Dowager Cixi: the Concubine who Launched Modern China
Author:          Jung Chang
Publisher:     Vintage Books, London (3 July 2014)
ISBN-10:        0099532395
ISBN-13:        9780099532392
Website:         http://www.jungchang.net/
Pages:              Paperback, 528 pages
Genre:             Literary Non-Fiction – History

 What’s it about?

Empress Dowager Cixi was never ‘crowned’ empress. But she was the de facto ruler of China from 1861 to 1908. At the age of 16, Cixi was ‘honoured’ for being selected to be a concubine to the Emperor Xianfeng. At the death of the Emperor, she (then 25 years old) with the official Empress Zhen, “sat behind the throne”…