Jacques Guiod Book order (chronological)

David Seymour (1911-1956) de vient photographe lorsque les bouleversements qui ravagent l'Europe dans les années 1930 mettent fin à son rêve d'étudier les sciences à la Sorbonne. De la guerre d'Espagne à la crise de Suez, il couvre les grands conflits mondiaux et, aux côtés de Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson et George Rodger, fonde l'agence Magnum Photos. Ses images, empreintes d'humanisme, vont contribuer à redéfinir le photojournalisme. Seymour meurt tragiquement sous le feu ennemi en 1956, alors qu'il effectue un reportage sur la crise de Suez.

To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor's wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate façade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor's son. Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.