The Death of Woman Wang

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.

ISBN 1847243428   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9781847243423 (What's this?)   Pages 192 Publisher Quercus Publishing Plc   Published in London Imprint Quercus Publishing Plc   Height (mm) 198 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 132 Publication date 10 Jan 2008   Academic level General DEWEY 951.14032

Acknowledgements Preface The Observers The Land The Widow The Feud The Woman Who Ran Away Epilogue: The Trial Notes Bibliography General map of T'an-ch'eng County Layout of the magistrate's yame in T'an-ch'eng City Reconstructed map of T'an-ch'eng County

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

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