Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38992 in Books
• Published on: 1993-06-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

J.G. Ballard, Sunday Times
Immensely moving and unsettling; an unforgettable portrait of the brain-death of a nation’

Synopsis
Through the lives of three different women - grandmother, mother and daughter - this book tells the story of 20th-century China. At times scarcely credible in the details it reveals of the suffering of millions of ordinary Chinese people, it is an unforgettable record of tyranny, hope and ultimate survival under conditions of extreme harshness. In 1924, at the age of 15, the author's grandmother became the concubine of a powerful warlord, whom she was seldom to see during the ten years of their "marriage". Her daughter, born in 1931, experienced the horrors of Japanese occupation in Manchuria as a schoolgirl, and after their surrender joined the Communist-led underground fighting Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang. She rose to be a senior Communist official, but was imprisoned three times. Her husband, also a high official and one of the very first to join the Communists, was relentlessly persecuted, imprisoned and finally sent to a labour camp where, physically broken and disillusioned, he lost his sanity. The author herself grew up during the Cultural Revolution, at the time of the personality cult of Mao and the worst excesses of the Gang of Four.

She joined the Red Guard but after Mao's death she was to become one of the first Chinese students to study abroad.

From the Publisher
The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well over two million, it was received with unanimous critical acclaim, and was named the winner of the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award.

Customer Reviews

The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)