The Death of Woman Wang - Hardcover

Spence, Mr Jonathan D

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670262323 ISBN 13: 9780670262328

Publisher: Viking Books, 1978

Synopsis

In The Death of Woman Wang the award-winning historian Jonathan Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure time and place: provincial China in the late 17th century. Drawing on a range of sources, including local Chinese histories, the memoirs of scholars and other contemporary writings, Spence reconstructs an extraordinary tale of rural tragedy in a remote corner of the northeastern Chinese province of Shantung. Life in the county of T'an-ch'eng emerges as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. The Death of Woman Wang not only magnificently evokes the China of the late Ming period, but also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.

About this title

Review:

Spence shows himself at once historian, detective and artist...He makes history howl. Unforgettable - The New Republic

Whether judged as fiction or as historical reconstruction, this is a masterpiece of style and narration - Harold Bloom

From the Back Cover:

“Spence shows himself at once historian, detective and artist ... He makes history howl. Unforgettable.” The New Republic In The Death of Woman Wang, the first in Jonathan Spence's remarkable sequence of reconstructions of Chinese society under the Qing dynasty, the award-winning historian paints a vivid picture of an obscure time and place: provincial China in the late 17th century. Drawing on a range, including local Chinese histories, the memoirs of scholars and other contemporary writings, Spence reconstructs an extraordinary tale of rural tragedy in a remote corner of the northeastern Chinese province of Shantung. Life in the county of Tan-ch'eng emerges as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. The Death of Woman Wang not only magnificently evokes the China of the early Qing period, but also depends our understanding of the China we know today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Books
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0670262323
• ISBN 13: 9780670262328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 169