Da Chen. (2012). My Last Empress: A Novel. Crown.

Da Chen. 2012. My Last Empress: A Novel. Crown.

Da Chen, My Last Empress: A Novel. Crown, 2012.

Da Chen. My Last Empress: A Novel. Crown, 2012.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307952707
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 26708
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B008ZPG8U8
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 26708
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 26708
     2. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307952707
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 0307381307

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Da Chen

title

My Last Empress

dateAdded

2012-10-18T17:17:20.08-04:00

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=859180
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

My Last Empress A Novel

crossRefId

859180

subtitle

A Novel

id

ddf789bc-685f-4925-900a-6846c7dddc68

starRating

2.4

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: MyLastEmpress_9780307952707_859180
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 2625307
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307952707
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 26708
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 10/2/2012
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/MyLastEmpressANovel9780307952707.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: MyLastEmpress_859180
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 26708
     2. • type: ASIN
        • value: B008ZPG8U8
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 10/2/2012
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/MyLastEmpressANovel9780307952707.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: MyLastEmpress_9780307952707_859180
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307952707
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 26708
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 10/2/2012
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/MyLastEmpressANovel9780307952707.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: literary fiction
2. • value: translation
3. • value: Historical
4. • value: romance
5. • value: culture
6. • value: Rome
7. • value: art history
8. • value: Fiction
9. • value: novels
10. • value: classic
11. • value: love
12. • value: Coming of age
13. • value: love story
14. • value: 20th Century
15. • value: romantic
16. • value: Historical Fiction
17. • value: mystery
18. • value: art
19. • value: WWII
20. • value: Historical Romance
21. • value: feminism
22. • value: Music
23. • value: Chick Lit
24. • value: literature
25. • value: Alternate History
26. • value: American Literature
27. • value: gender
28. • value: fiction books
29. • value: fantasy
30. • value: historical romance books
31. • value: historical novels
32. • value: romance books
33. • value: romance novels
34. • value: historical fiction novels
35. • value: historical fiction books
36. • value: books historical fiction
37. • value: realistic fiction books
38. • value: books fiction

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Chen, Da
   • bioText: DA CHEN grew up in China and graduated from Columbia University Law School. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. Brothers, Da Chen's acclaimed first work of fiction, made the 2006 best book lists at the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, and Publishers Weekly. Other books include the New York Times bestselling memoir Colors of the Mountain, Sounds of the River, Wandering Warrior and China's Son.
   • name: Da Chen

imprint

Crown

publishDate

2012-10-02T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

My Last Empress

fullDescription

A sweeping story of passion and obsession, set against the upheavals of nineteenth-century imperial China, by the New York Times bestselling author Da Chen

When Samuel Pickens’s great love tragically loses her life, Samuel travels the globe, Annabelle always on his mind. Eventually, he comes face-to-face with the mirror image of his obsession in the last place he would expect and must discover her secrets and decide how far he will go for a woman he loves.
Da Chen immerses the reader in the world of the Chinese imperial palace, filled with ghosts and grief, where bewitching concubines, treacherous eunuchs, and fierce warlords battle for supremacy. Chen takes us deeply into an epic saga of nineteenth-century China, where one man searches for his destiny and a forbidden love.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Bookpage
   • content: "The best romance stories are always the most fearless...Sweeps you away with visions of a bygone age of royal extravagance...Fans of sweeping historical romance like Gone with the Wind and Ian McEwan's Atonement, as well as fans of transgressive sexual explorations like Nabokov's Lolita, will find another engrossing story in My Last Empress. It's both moving and frightening, dark and hopeful, gut-wrenching and inspiring. Chen has delivered another powerful work in an already stellar career."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "Chen's lyrical prose enhances and deepens the eerie tone of this atmospheric melodrama."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Steeped in the language and colors of an Asia long gone... Chen's...19th-century tale of obsession explores the line between love and madness."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Janet Fitch, New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint it Black
   • content: "In My Last Empress, Da Chen pushes the reader into the strangest corners of the human heart, with a style of pure creepy gorgeousness. Like a fan opening, vane by mysterious vane."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Ravi Shankar, Pushcart Prize winning poet and Founding Editor of Drunken Boat
   • content: Da Chen's My Last Empress is an intoxicating and consistently surprising historical novel that delves into the nature of erotic passion, obsession and phantasmagoric haunting with vivid descriptive flourishes that evoke the courtly life of 19th century imperial China. Set against the backdrop of both New England and China, the narrative masterly interweaves the story of narrator Samuel Pickens going in search of his deceased beloved while stumbling upon the intrigue and mysterious machinations of the Chinese emperor, a world full of eunuchs, warlords, and concubines, replete with loyalty and betrayal. Simultaneously a timeless love story and a dazzling tale of dangerous infatuation, My Last Empress brings the reader along on a sensual and astounding journey of self-discovery and cultural revelation. A truly original novel written by one of our most inspired bicultural writers."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Josip Novakovich, American Book Award and Whiting Award winning author of April Fool's Day
   • content: Da Chen has followed Nabokov's dictum to caress the detail beautifully, with a calligraphic touch, to create an enchanting tale and a picaro journey through the vanities of the American upper classes with many surprising twists, humor, eros, and profound psychological insights."
7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 20, 2012
     Chen's (Brothers) 19th-century tale of obsession explores the line between love and madness. After Samuel Pickens's first love, Annabelle, perishes in a fire a month into their adolescent romance, her spirit stays with him through Yale and beyond, an invisible partner who reigns over him. Later, an adult Pickens acquires a position as tutor to the teenage emperor of China's Qing Dynasty and travels to the country where his beloved spent her childhood. There, he finds a royal palace overrun with corrupt eunuchs and led by a callow and unprepared emperor. Pickens is soon befriended by his effeminate pupil, but the tutor becomes enamored with 13-year-old Empress Qiu Rong, fourth wife of the emperor and Annabelle's doppelgänger. Their ensuing perverse love affair is complicated by the schemes of various parties, but together they navigate the traps set for them, seeking assistance from a local warlord and other shady individuals. Steeped in the language and colors of an Asia long gone, this florid, Lolita-esque tale focuses too narrowly on the narrator's lost love and misses its potential to be a sweeping historical epic. Agent: Alex Glass, Trident Media Group.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from October 15, 2012
     Nabokov meets Dream of the Red Chamber. Chen (Brothers, 2006, etc.), a Chinese-born writer and now resident of New York's Hudson Valley, has a profoundly developed feel for the sweep of history--though here, unlike in Brothers, he compresses what might have been a saga into 300 pages. His story has an epic feel all the same: Samuel Pickens, a Yankee born into wealth and privilege, falls into head-swooning love with the daughter of a New England missionary who has spent her youth in China. Alas, their young love is fleeting, but events pull Samuel across the ocean and into a web of mystery, not least the fact that, years later, Samuel comes into contact with a young woman in the imperial court who looks very strangely like his lost love. The discovery turns Samuel's world upside down, of course. Chen is a master of suggestion by telling detail: Of the man who teaches Samuel Chinese, for example, he writes, "No one had taught us more with less," while Samuel's plans first come a cropper with a potential employer's being "choked to death by butterflies in his throat"--a neat allusion to Madama Butterfly there, perhaps. Chen sets up the enigma that Samuel must decipher before the first act closes, and though the solution isn't deeply buried, he takes his time in uncovering it elegantly. For those with an eye for such things, Chen also does a nice job of serving up literary erotica of a sort to do Colette proud: "Then she rode with gentleness, as if the horse beneath her was trotting on a soft path; her rosebud breasts heaved and her hair tossed with each motion." A lyrical tale of crossed borders, boundaries and destinies, expertly told.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 1, 2012
     

     Author of the best-selling memoir Colors of the Mountain, Da Chen sets the principal action of his latest novel amid the corruption of 19th-century China. The plot gathers momentum when narrator Samuel Pickens leaves New England for China to become the young emperor's chief tutor. Among the emperor's consorts, Pickens encounters Qio Rong, who strongly resembles his teenage lover, Annabelle. Annabelle's ghost has been driving him mad since her tragic death during a youthful tryst. Pickens at first resists his lust for Qio, but their eventual affair places them in opposition to a court dominated by lies, thievery, and murder. Interestingly, the couple seeks protection from a warlord with a surprising connection to Annabelle. VERDICT Da Chen has written a wonderful tale of passionate obsession. Pickens's desire for the youthful Qio won't suit everyone's taste, but the prose is elegantly inviting, and Pickens's insane fixation on reincarnating Annabelle will hold readers' fascination to the end. Recommended.--Faye A. Chadwell, Oregon State Univ. Libs., Corvallis

     Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      August 1, 2012
      A nineteenth-century Yankee blueblood from an upright Connecticut family finds his world upended when he is captivated by an exotically free-spirited young girl. After engaging in a whirlwind affair with Annabelle, a missionary's daughter who had been raised in China, Samuel Pickens is heartbroken when she dies in a tragic accident. Annabelle's spirit torments Samuel and compels him to travel to China, where he works as tutor-advisor to the emperor. Still obsessed by the memory of Annabelle, he falls for her Orientaldoppelganger, Empress Qiu Rong. As Samuel and Q eventually discover, their clandestine romance is only one of many secrets embedded within the labyrinthine walls of the Forbidden City. Chen's lyrical prose enhances and deepens the eerie tone of this atmospheric melodrama.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 1, 2013
      

      In this erotic historical novel, an American abroad becomes obsessed with a young girl who reminds him of a lost love in the emperor's court. (LJ 10/1/12)

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

135

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/ddf789bc-685f-4925-900a-6846c7dddc68/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

ddf789bc-685f-4925-900a-6846c7dddc68

starRating

2.4

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/DDF/789/BC/{DDF789BC-685F-4925-900A-6846C7DDDC68}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fiction
2. • value: Literature
3. • value: Romance
4. • value: Historical Fiction

publishDateText

10/02/2012

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9780307381309

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

A sweeping story of passion and obsession, set against the upheavals of nineteenth-century imperial China, by the New York Times bestselling author Da Chen

When Samuel Pickens’s great love tragically loses her life, Samuel travels the globe, Annabelle always on his mind. Eventually, he comes face-to-face with the mirror image of his obsession in the last place he would expect and must discover her secrets and decide how far he will go for a woman he loves.
Da Chen immerses the reader in the world of the Chinese imperial palace, filled with ghosts and grief, where bewitching concubines, treacherous eunuchs, and fierce warlords battle for supremacy. Chen takes us deeply into an epic saga of nineteenth-century China, where one man searches for his destiny and a forbidden love.

sortTitle

My Last Empress A Novel

crossRefId

859180

subtitle

A Novel

publisher

Crown

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC014000
   • description: FICTION / Historical / General
2. • code: FIC019000
   • description: Fiction / Literary
3. • code: FIC027050
   • description: Fiction / Romance / Historical / General