God′s Chinese Son – The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan - Softcover

Spence, Jonathan D

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393315568 ISBN 13: 9780393315561

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997

Synopsis

\'A magnificent tapestry . . . a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time: a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity.\'--Washington Post Book WorldWhether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God\'s Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China\'s Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the \'demon-devils,\' the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.

About this title

Review:

Marvelous and new. . . . [Spence] is the pre-eminent literary historian of China.--Richard Bernstein

From the Back Cover:

The Taiping rebellion in mid-nineteenth-century China was one of the strangest and most violent events in human history. It was led by Hong Xiuquan, a failed civil servant from a peasant family who was convinced by a dream that he was the son of the Christian God, entrusted with the task of saving the world, and was to cost at least twenty million lives. The basic outline of this bizarre rebellion is a matter of historical record: Hong's fiery preaching, which drew to him a fanatical army of followers, the battles, massacres and sieges by which they established power over a vast area of northern China; Hong's eleven-year rule over his 'Heavenly Kingdom' from his capital Nanjing, lolling on a golden sedan chair carried by concubines and playing his worshippers off against each other, the eventual demoralisation of his formerly invincible army, whose leaders by now included a motley collection of foreign mercenaries; a succession of defeats, the siege of Nanjing and the increasingly deluded and tyrannical Hong's death by poison. It is a titanic story.

To this Jonathan Spence adds insights into the minds of the participants – Hong in particular – and an immediacy in the unfolding of the narrative which makes 'God's Chinese Son' unlike any other history book of recent years. The book is a revelation both in its intimate detail and its grand scale, a work of tremendous force, with all the passion, drama and intensity of a great novel.

"Crammed with passion and violence and odd moments of humour. It reads like a great novel, and once again confirms that Jonathan Spence is the great literary historian of China writing in English today.”
LINDA JAIVIN, 'Australian'

"Combines scrupulous scholarship and a vivid imagination. The result is enthralling."
SIMON SCOTT PLUMMER, 'The Tablet'

"Irresistible... magnificent."
MARIE ARANA-WARD, 'Washington Post'

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0393315568
• ISBN 13: 9780393315561
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432