Gripping, terrible, beautiful story, 29 May 2004

Jung Chang's writing is deceptively simple and you truly relate and identify both with the narrator and her family. This means that it's like a gripping novel, as well as biography.

Plus, this book gives you an insider view of the irrationality of Chinese Communism and shows George Orwell's nightmare vision of '1984' to be more accurate than ever. Yet, the book never lapses into tedious explanations or arguments, teaching us history without any effort.

 Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)

...wow, 20 Jun 2004

If you die ebfore reading this book, you have truly missed a great human achievement.

 Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)

Three daughters of China, 6 Dec 2002

Jung Chang has written a book that will stay with the reader for a long time. Born in 1952, she was raised, mostly by her Grandmother, under the rule of Chairman Mao.

Her parents were "high Officials" who were greatly respected by their co-workers and friends, and great believers in Mao's communist dream. Jung Chang tells us in passionate detail how, after the "Cultural Revolution", both her Parents were persecuted and at various points in their lives, imprisoned or sent to remote camps to work for redemption for their crimes against chairman Mao.

At the time Jung had little knowledge about just what her parents were going through, both of them believed in communism, both of them revered Mao, and yet they were being punished.

Mao had cleverly manipulated the population of China with mind games; he suppressed information to the masses and used their ignorance to turn them against each other for the greater cause.

During this time the "Red Army" was formed, using propaganda, Mao incited all the students to revolt against their teachers, giving them ambiguous reasons for doing so, and allowing violent and humiliating acts to befall the teachers,who were denounced as "bourgeois intellectuals".

This is a must read for anyone interested in the social history of China, it is beautifully written, Jung Chang tells us, in a no nonsense way, about the beauty and the horrors of living in a dictatorship.

The hardships endured by hundreds of millions of people, in the name of communism, may not sound like the sort of bedtime read we all like, but this book is so full of energy and hope that it will carry you along, because you will find yourself caring about the people involved, and that is what makes a good story great.

My one criticism about this book is the way it ends, Jung only gives us a few paragraphs about her life in the free west, and I would have been very interested in finding out about how she coped, it must have been a huge culture shock to leave China and land in Britain.

 Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)