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Title: Great NOVEL, but has huge historical errors!
Review: This is the first book I read about Tzu Hsi, and I found it totally engrossing. After reading a number of other, more recent biographical works on her reign, it is sad to see how so many very false assumptions about her (upon which Pearl Buck bases many of the key assumptions of this novel) have created a very distorted view of her as an individual, a leader, and particulalry as a woman.Pearl S. Buck writes in her Foreward "I have tried to portray Tzu Hsi as accurately as possible from available resources...." and this, unfortunately, is the book's biggest flaw. The scholarship was often totally false and grossly distorted, and so western writers perpetuated many false assumptions about her.Read Sterling Seagrave's Dragon Lady if you want a more accurate portrayal of her.
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