It's hard to read a book by a modern Chinese writer set in classical times without looking for a political message about today's Chinese rulers. But if that's what's happening here, the message is a nuanced one. Duanbai is not an evilly intentioned ruler, but he is careless, lazy, and essentially there by chance. He is mainly interested in doing what he wants rather than trying to run the country well, he can be capricious and also violent - in one incident, he thinks a couple of courtiers are laughing at him so orders that everyone who laughs in the palace must be slapped. But a big part of the violence and brutality at court comes from the power struggles of others, rather than anything Duanbai himself is imposing. There are also indications that the rulers of neighbouring states are just as bad. You could take this either as a cynical view that everyone is as bad as each other, or perhaps an argument that this is inevitably what absolute power will lead to. Another interesting thing in the book is how weak the Emperor is - not just in the sense that he is a weak ruler, but also that he cannot always do what he wants. His beloved concubine, for example, is done for by palace intrigue, despite his urgent attempts to protect her.

Although this is a historical novel, it's not set in a specific time: it's more of a fable. Nevertheless, Su Tong does a good job of building an atmosphere of looming doom. He also manages to portray the boy emperor in a way which is not completely unsympathetic, although he never really becomes a fully rounded character.

Sample: Singing and dancing in the Xie Palace masked the reality that spring was on its way out. As before, another sort of gunpowder hung in the air amid the redolence of face powder, rouge, fallen petals and new lotuses: it was the smell of interminable battles in the women's quarters at the rear of the palace. ( )

Like a kugua ( )

I bought this book in Beijing, knowing little about the author other than that he had written a short-story collection on which a fairly successful movie was made ("Raise the Red Lantern"). Once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down.

It's a first-person narrative of the life of a fictitious Chinese emperor, "The Emperor of Xie," from age fourteen when he took the throne until old age in a Buddhist monastery. The imagery is poetic (thanks in part to the way the Manadarin language was used in the past to name places, people, and things). The plot is picaresque (moving quickly from one strange episode to the next), and I suspect that many American readers could find this a bit archaic, but I loved it. I also loved the point-of-view character, Duanbai, the Emperor of Xie, whose character arc is one of the most bizarre I've ever encountered.

Having just visited Beijing for the first time, the experience of reading MY LIFE AS EMPEROR was probably enhanced by first-hand experience of the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, but I recommend it highly to any reader who loves historical fiction and foreign cultures.

PS: I find the edition to be especially beautiful. It's a softcover with a dust jacket and is printed in tactile, cream-colored paper. I couldn't find a single typo or error in the text, and the page design is elegant. My edition was published in the UK by Faber & Faber. (Too bad the American publishing industry can't produce something like this.) ( )

This is an absolutely fabulous book. I considered buying it in Japan but set it down because the price (about $20) was too high to gamble on an unknown author. What a shame, because the paperback would have been worth that much indeed. Tong sets his narrative in a mythical kingdom in an mythical China, a device which works perfectly by allowing the characters' pathos and motivations to assume a universality of which they wouldn't otherwise be capable in true historical fiction (see: Anchee Min). The narrative is gripping and the characters fully rounded, and all of this is done with a minimum of words. Like all good books in its vein, it greatly clarified for me why people in certain positions in classical China behaved as they did, and this without being in the least didactic. "My Life As Emperor" also has the most solid, lucid translation into English I have ever run across, and although I still hope to read it in the original one day, I can honestly say that I was never once aware that I was reading something that hadn't originally been written in English. Read this book. ( )

Intense, beautiful and very bitter. ( )