Used book – The Valley of Roses, Lucien Bodard

Around 1850, Yi, a young Manchu beauty, nurtures an incredible dream: to become "Empress of Emperor Hieng-fong, a drunkard and pederast." She achieves this, driven by a fierce desire "to crush, to act, to enjoy." This insane ambition, in a surreal China, involves the Concubinage contest, sexual machinations, and ultimately the poisoning of the Emperor. A debauchery of refinements, of delights in crime, as the Western "Barbarians" advance on Beijing... In the Valley of Roses (a Chinese metaphor for the female sex), the Bodardian torrent flows, golden yellow and muddy, in a whirlwind of the unusual, a whirlwind of horrors.