UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · HISTORY
Anchee Min
Also known as: Anchee MIn
Four hundred propaganda posters to look at.
— from Chinese propaganda posters
Most acclaimed
Chinese propaganda posters
"The Communist superheo - Mao's starring role in Chinese propaganda art. Over 300 posters produced during the rule of Chairman Mao to promote Communist values and to portray the bright future of the People's Republic of China. With essays examining the history of Chinese propaganda and the experience of living in Mao's China."--[P.] 4.
Empress Orchid
It is the final days of the Chinese empire. Trade in opium with Europe is slowly corroding the power of the Ch'ing Dynasty. Orchid, a beautiful seventeen-year-old from an aristocratic but impoverished family, is pushed into the maelstrom when she finds herself unexpectedly chosen to become a lower-ranking concubine of the Emperor. The world inside the Forbidden City is erotically charged and highly ritualised, but beneath its immaculate face lie whispers of murders and ghosts. The thousands of concubines will go to any lengths to bear the Emperor a son and become his Empress. Determined not to be a victim of the jealousies and foul play, Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed and seduces the monarch. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and she will be its last Empress. EMPRESS ORCHID is the story of this fascinating, strong-willed woman who for generations has been vilified as a grand seductress and murderess. Anchee Min draws a vivid portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman and, through her life, the world of the Chinese court and the sexual and political lives of the royal concubines. Richly detailed and completely gripping, this is a novel of high drama and lyricism from the acclaimed author of Becoming Madame Mao and Red Azalea.
Katherine
An American woman comes to China to teach English just as that country opens its doors, six years after the deal of Chairman Mao. Her clothes, her hair, her charm - the stories she tells of an American childhood, the lessons in casual conversation and pop music - awaken in the men and women she tutors a yearning for the tantalizing West and an unknowable eroticism. She is a witting and unwitting seductress who cannot conceive that when she enters into a love triangle with two of her students - one male, one female - its consequences will be insidious and inexorably tragic. In Katherine, Min writes of the clash of centuries-old mystical traditions and modern American ways, of love and betrayal, and of both the balm and destruction obsession offers. Anchee Min's fiction debut confirms her arrival as a writer of singular importance.