The story of three generations in twentieth-century China
that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness
history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than
ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction
from the author.
An engrossing record of Mao’s
impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the
modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang
describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members:
her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s
struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’
experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the
Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of
fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a
steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation
unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately
uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own
family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.