Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

BookBrowse Reviews The Last Empress by Anchee Min

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Last Empress by Anchee Min

The Last Empress

by Anchee Min
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 21, 2007, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2008, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


A powerful revisionist portrait of one of the most important figures in Chinese history
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For access to our digital magazine, free books,and other benefits, become a member today.

In Empress Orchid, the first of Anchee Min's two novels about Empress Tzu Hsi the reader meets the young girl, later to be known as Orchid, and her impoverished mother, on their way to Beijing to bury Orchid's recently deceased father. Once in Beijing, Orchid learns that the young Emperor Hsien Feng is looking for brides who, to preserve the purity of the Imperial line, must be Manchurian, which she is. She is chosen and exchanges a life of poverty for the restricted life of a third-grade concubine in the Forbidden City.

Through wily maneuvering she seduces the Emperor and bares him his first son, who is five years old when declared Emperor on the death of his father. To ensure that both she and her son stay alive, Orchid, who now takes the name Tzu Hsi (meaning "kindly and virtuous"), forms an alliance with the dead Emperor's first wife so that they rule as joint regents, but Orchid must use all her skill to counter the rivals and treachery that lie behind every bamboo screen.

The Last Empress, which opens where Empress Orchid ends, lacks the compelling rags-to-riches/love story elements of Empress Orchid and tends to read like a series of vignettes not a continuous novel - probably the result of trying to squeeze nearly half a century of turbulent history into less than 300 pages. The result is a strangely dry and emotionless novel which makes it difficult to feel a connection with any of the many secondary characters because their time on stage is so short

Having said that, Empress Orchid and The Last Empress have much to offer. Not least of which are vivid details of Imperial court life and an enlightening revisionist portrait of the woman that the Western press maligned as the "Dragon Lady". If you have read and enjoyed Empress Orchid, then you should certainly continue the story in The Last Empress. If you have not read the first book it will probably take you a few chapters to orientate yourself. As usual, you can "test drive" Empress Orchid and The Last Empress to decide whether they're books for you by reading an excerpt of both at BookBrowse.


Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957 during the rule of communist leader Mao Zedong. At the age of 17, she was sent to a labor camp near the East China Sea, where she endured mental and physical hardships leading to a severe spinal cord injury. She worked for three years before talent scouts spotted her toiling in a cotton field. Madame Mao, preparing to take over China, was looking for a leading actress for a propaganda film. Min was selected for having the ideal "proletarian" look. Mao died before the film was complete, and Madame Mao, blamed for the disaster of the revolution, was sentenced to death. Min was labeled a political outcast by association. She was disgraced, punished, and forced to perform menial tasks in order to reform herself. In 1984, with the help of actress Joan Chen, Min left China for America. She spoke no English when she arrived in Chicago, but within six months had taught herself the language in part by watching "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" on American television.

Her bestselling memoir, Red Azalea was published in 1994. Since then she has written five works of historical fiction: Katherine, Becoming Madame Mao, Wild Ginger, Empress Orchid and The Last Empress. The books attempt to re-record histories that, in Min's view, have been falsely written. "If my own history is recorded falsely, how about other people?" she asks.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in May 2007, and has been updated for the May 2008 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book:
  Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Last Empress, try these:

  • Peony in Love jacket

    Peony in Love

    by Lisa See

    Published 2008

    About This book

    More by this author

    Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place – even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence. Ultimately, Lisa See’s new novel addresses universal themes: the bonds of friendship, the power of words, and the age-old desire of women to be heard.

  • Mao jacket

    Mao

    by Jung Chang, Jon Halliday

    Published 2006

    About This book

    This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It will astonish historians and the general reader alike.

We have 7 read-alikes for The Last Empress, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Anchee Min
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Book Jacket
The Story Collector
by Evie Woods
From the international bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop!
Who Said...

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.