The Chinese Emperor (Penguin International Writers S.)

by B. Bray (Translator), Jean Levi (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.51

• Used

  Hardcover
  1988

  $39.29

  Awarded the 1985 Goncourt Prize, this is more a political fable than an historical novel, concerning the rise to power of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the Great Emperor of China. Set in the third century BC, it charts the means by which the Emperor unified seven warring provinces into China, uniting an immense population and building the Great Wall. Translated from the French, the author depicts a court world of luxury, decadence and cruelty effectively administering a totalitarian state with laws, bureaucrats, spies and mind-control all founded on Taoist principles. The Emperor's dreams of ideal order and personal immortality are mirrored in his artificial city of puppets cast in bronze and the armies of clay warriors which he orders to be placed in underground chambers to guard his future tomb.