Book Review:
The Last Manchu Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China
Edited by: Paul Kramer

Submitted by: Tiffany Joy A. Candelaria
2 History

I. Brief Summary
This book is an autobiography of a man who became The Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty, at two years of age, named Henry Pu Yi. He lived a life as an emperor up until China’s government became republic and seized his powers. Until then, he continued his life back in Tientsin and tried to continue his legacy by being head of a Japanese puppet state. In spite of all his hard work, he still encountered a lot of temptations along the way and problems which is the hardest to solve. This story narrates the unusual social transitions of a man who was born ordinary,
After Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945 he was asked to abdicate.
Pu Yi and his companions were captured by Russian soldiers in 1946 and were sent to Tokyo to appear as witness in various War Crimes trails. After several months he was returned to Siberia, and remained there until 1950.
He was sent back to China where he was placed in a camp for political prisoners and was released in 1959. He received his full rights as a citizen on November 20, 1960 and continued his life and died of cancer.

VI. Argument
This autobiography gave out the detailed life events of Henry Pu Yi in such a manner that kept readers wanting more of the story. It is undeniably remarkable to read an autobiography that is complete with history backgrounds, description and pictures of some important life events of Pu Yi. You will see that the author and editor of this book included even the most detrimental of Pu Yi’s actions and his life was ordered chronologically that you wouldn’t miss an episode in his life. The book is different from all the other autobiographies because Pu Yi started narrating as early as when he was 2 with the help of different stories told by the eunuch’s and continued until he grew up. The author was greatly interested that he even sacrificed his own time to interview different people that known Pu Yi and included it in his autobiography. Though there are some parts of the narration that was repeated, still it was