The Death of Woman Wang

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“Spence shows himself at once historian, detective, and artist. . . . He makes history howl.” (The New Republic)
 
Award-winning author Jonathan D. Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure place and time: provincial China in the seventeenth century. Life in the northeastern county of T’an-ch’eng emerges here 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. Magnificently evoking the China of long ago, The Death of Woman Wang also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.Acknowledgments
Preface
One: The Observers
Two: The Land
Three: The Widow
Four: The Feud
Five: The Woman Who Ran Away
Epilogue: The Trial
Notes
BibliographyPraise for The Death of Woman Wang:
 
“Whether judged as fiction or as historical reconstruction, [this] is a masterpiece of style and narration.”
—Harold Bloom
 
“An unforgettable book of historical re-creation.”
—The New RepublicJonathan Spence (1936-2021):  Was the author of more than a dozen well-regarded books “which illuminate China’s vast history through details that illuminated bigger pictures and themes. (The New York Times)” including  The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Treason by the Book, and The Death of Woman Wang. His awards include a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008.US

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