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"This book", Diana Preston tells us, "is about the human experience of living through the Boxer rising"; and she works hard to humanise the enormous historical events of China in 1900. She does this by drawing on extensive and often vivid eyewitness accounts and her own prose frequently becomes almost novelistic ("Then, suddenly, above the clamour of rifle fire the distant boom of heavy guns was heard coming from the east" and so on).Sometimes this works very well: we are, for instance, given a compelling sense of how claustrophobic it must have been to live through the siege. Other times the sheer crush of dramatis personae crowds the narrative out a little. But Preston's great skill is in negotiating a line between extreme interpretations of an extreme event. The perspective is more from the Western side, but nothing is black and white in this complex and detailed account. --Adam Roberts
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Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.59. Seller Inventory # Q-0094793905