My Life as Emperor [Hardcover]

Su Tong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2005

In this chilling yet enormously entertaining tale by acclaimed Chinese writer Su Tong, a pampered and naïve 14-year-old prince finds himself, suddenly and unexpectedly, named as Emperor and placed in the position of lord and ruler over an entire nation. A boy of few talents and limited interests, he soon grows drunk on his own power and learns to wield an iron fist in dealing with subjects inside and outside the palace. Narrated in retrospect by the ex-Emperor, this is a mesmerizing story of cruelty and decadence, of concubines and eunuchs, of lethal imperial rivalries and royal court intrigue.

Su Tong is one of the most celebrated Chinese writers today. The New York Times calls him "an imaginative and skillful storyteller." The publication of this book -- his first in almost ten years -- will be an international literary event. His innovative, deftly constructed novels remain at the forefront of a growing body of work by a coterie of writers who have exposed new facts about China's past and posed vital questions regarding the country's future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It takes mere days for a shy, wistful 14-year-old prince to turn into a full-fledged terror as emperor when rule over the fictional Xie Empire is unexpectedly bequeathed to him in this gorgeous bloodbath of a novel, the latest from the author of Rice and the Raise the Red Lantern series of novellas (filmed by Zhang Yimou). Told in the first person, the book chronicles the boy-emperor Duanbai's matter-of-fact demands, appetites and diversions, which involve everything from settling paltry old scores with lethal force to removing the tongues of discarded concubines. Only a young court eunuch named Swallow manages to elicit something resembling true affection from the young emperor over the course of their peculiar and at times heartbreaking eight-year relationship. Tong's lush prose style ("The corpses looked like wooden logs lying in the snow-covered wheat fields, though the rank smell of blood hovered above them") provides the perfect counterpoint, as well as startling detail and texture, to the perilous court life it recounts. Threaded in are the moral lessons of the monk Juekong, heeded by Duanbai only after it is far too late. Tong claims in his preface that this "scary dream on a rainy night" is set "in no particular time"; applied to today's world, it becomes powerful allegory.
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From Booklist

The latest offering from the author of Raise the Red Lantern (1993) and Rice (1995) is a nightmarish tale that borrows from classical Chinese history but is set in no particular time. When his father dies, Duanbai, the 14-year-old prince, becomes the emperor of the Xie Empire. A palace madman's ominous refrain that "calamity will soon befall the Xie Empire" foreshadows the harsh, childish young ruler's demise, and beginning with his surprising inauguration, Duanbai describes his brief time on the throne and the events that depose him. As in Su Tong's previous work, dark currents of inhumanity, violence, and opulent, shimmering detail flow through the story. Duanbai is an unapologetically repugnant narrator, capable of inconceivable cruelty exercised on childish whims. But the crushing repercussions of his dim-witted self-indulgence, naivete, and brutality, as well as Su Tong's mesmerizing cinematic detail, create a powerful, terrifying, dreamlike story that questions the fateful influences that shape and sustain leaders. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (February 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140136666X
• ISBN-13: 978-1401366667
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,662,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Kingdom's Fall, an Emperor's Rebirth, February 23, 2005

By 

Steve Koss (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Life as Emperor (Hardcover)

Along with Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, Su Tong is widely regarded as one of mainland China's premier novelists, and with good reason. MY LIFE AS EMPEROR, the third of Su Tong's works to be published in English (after RAISE THE RED LANTERN and RICE), tells a brilliant and compelling tale of fate, decay and decadence, and palace intrigue fueled by the whims of a fourteen-year-old and his manipulating grandmother, a figure strongly reminiscent of China's famous Qing Dynasty dragon empress, Cixi. Yet within this bleak context of impending doom, the author gives us a phoenix tale, the story of an unlikely rebirth into a life of peace and contemplation.

MY LIFE AS EMPEROR is set in an unknown place at an indistinct time, although the author closes by locating the renamed imperial capitol as Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, not far from his own Suzhou birthplace. At the death of his Emperor father, fourteen-year-old Duanbai - the fifth of his father's sons - is unexpectedly called by his grandmother, Madame Huangfu, to assume the throne of the Xie Empire. Sun Xin, an alchemist and his deceased father's attendant - now reduced to madness - proclaims that calamity will soon befall the Empire. And it indeed does as Duanbai's ascendancy sets off a chain of palace intrigues among his half brothers.

Duanbai himself is feckless and capricious, immature and utterly unprepared for his responsibilities. Duanbai's sleep is filled with night demons, and he is given to acts of pettiness and stunning viciousness alternating with acts of deep sympathy and love. The only person he can trust, his mentor Juekong, is banished from the capitol to live out his life as a monk on Bitter Bamboo Mountain. He befriends a palace eunuch named Swallow and falls deeply in love with a concubine, Lady Hui, but his empire is beset by enemies from within and without. He ultimately loses his throne to his oldest brother, Duanwen, and is banished from the capitol to live life as a commoner as his punishment. The balance of the novel tells the story of Duanbai's life after his fall from power.

Written in 1992, MY LIFE AS EMPEROR offers an engrossing story line filled with memorable characters and fascinating insights into imperial life. As in his other works, Su Tong can be brutally cruel and explicit, but wondrously lyrical and richly symbolic. As he suggests in his Preface, this story is a dream from within the dream world in which he lives and writes. It is a dream filled most notably with birds and bird images: the foreboding white herons on the book's opening page, his eunuch Swallow, Lady Hui's Singing Oriole Pavilion, the birdlike feeling of tightrope walking, and the Double Eagle crest of the invading Peng Empire among others.

From young Emperor Duanbai's favorite cricket cages to his escapades with tightroping walking, MY LIFE AS EMPEROR is a tragic story of unasked for imprisonment and deeply sought freedom. In the end, stark military power prevails in the public sphere, but the wisdom of Confucius' ANALECTS provides the one true way to peace. Sadly, the path to Bitter Bamboo Mountain is littered with mistakes, needless suffering, and tragedy. Life is bitter, indeed.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom in the midsts of cruelty, August 10, 2006

By 

Mr. Richard K. Weems "emperor_weems" (Fair Lawn, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Life as Emperor (Hardcover)

Su Tong made a quick name for himself when his novella _Raise the Red Lantern_ was made into a great film. One might think that such success could spoil an author to continue to write what has already been successful, but his next book, _Rice_, offered its own challenges when Su Tong took on a deeply disturbed and violent man as his protagonist. _Rice_ was a great book, because even through horrific events, Tong looked for the rationale of every character and allowed them to present themselves in honest ways. Now, with _My Life as Emperor_, Su Tong takes the other perspective--rather than focus on a poor crook, his focus is now a young man named emperor of the fictional Xie Empire.

Su Tong has fully confirmed his masterful ability to mix the harsh and cruel realities of social commentary with genuine pathos for the characters within those commentaries. It is a wise and splendid mix--Su Tong addresses the problems of the hierarchies of people while treating the people themselves with compassion and empathy. Duanbai, who ascends to the throne of the Xie Empire at the age of 14 even though he was not the first-born to the dead emperor, is a troublesome narrator, for he is spoiled and gets drunk on his own power quite easily, but still he is someone to sympathize for, for even with the power to have a person's tongue removed at his whim, he is still under the thumb of his grandmother, who will gladly strike out with her longevity cane. The implications of Duanbai's rash ruling are not as clear as they could be to convey the misery the new emperor is inciting in his own empire, but the growth of Duanbai in his friendship with a eunuch named Swallow and of course the problems people find with his claim on the throne, makes this a wise and wonderful book. Even if you find the book a little shallow at first, I would stay stay with it, for the ending is masterful.

Su Tong adds another successful work to his canon, possibly because he works on a very simple yet effective paradigm--even in the most awful situations, people will create their own happiness or misery.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gripping Tale, August 14, 2005

By 

T. Hooper "thdizzy" (Osaka, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Life as Emperor (Hardcover)

My Life As Emperor by Su Tong is really hard to put down once you start. His writing style just pulls you in as you try to figure out the mind of the protagonist, Duanbai, the fifth emperor of the Xie Empire. The tale starts out with the death of the fourth emperor and the unexpected appointment of his fifth son, Duanbai, as the emperor. Duanbai is only 14 years old, and is completely unprepared for the job. While he wastes his time with his pursuits, the real government is his overbearing grandmother who rules with an iron fist. On commiting his first act of cruelty, he feels regret, but his grandmother tells him that he would do the same, so he goes down the road to being a cruel and thoughtless ruler. His frustration at his powerlessness and his complete inability to rule leads him to strike out at those around him. This tendency is made worse by his poor mental health. As his empire crumbles around him, though, he begins to see some things which offer him some comfort and perhaps a path to a better life.

It may be difficult to imagine the cruelty which the protagonist enjoys, and some may be put off by it. Some may even claim that such cruelty is unimaginable, but I don't think that is true. The world around us is surrounded with cruelty which is just as bad as anything this emperor does. The only difference is that we have come to accept that cutting out prisoners' tongues is unacceptable, while we rationalize the cruelties of our modern age. In reading this book, I hope that you step back from the fictional world of Duanbai's empire, and take a look at our own world. If you do that, reading this book can become a powerful experience.