Philippe Paquet, Madame Chiang Kai-shek – Un siècle d’histoire de la Chine (Madame Chiang Kai-shek – A century of Chinese history). Paris, Gallimard, 2010, 776 pp. + 35 pages of illustrations.

As Simon Leys rightly says in his preface (p. 16), this monumental work of nearly 700 pages is a welcome arrival on the life and long career of Soong Mayling, youngest of the Soong Sisters and doubtless one of the most influential and controversial women of the twentieth century. Narrating the life of this grand personage, Philippe Paquet offers an especially well-documented portrait of a complex and often brutal era – that of the construction of Asia’s first republic. The Sinologist imbues a...