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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
Very good indeed. Despite being non fiction it is told in a very engaging manner, not something to be devoured because it is very dense and emotionally draining but nonetheless a fantastic book and definitely worthy of the five starts I have bestowed on it.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This was an incredibly harrowing memoir that also gave me a great deal of insight into a period of time in China's history that I only really had a surface level knowledge of.
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
This is a book that has been on my ‘to read’ list for some time. Its reputation as an authoritative memoir of 20th century China precedes it, and it was very much a book I wanted to read. I’m glad to say I finally got round to it.
As a Westerner and a ‘millennial’ I had a fairly good idea of that history. I knew about Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese in China, the life of Pu Yi, Tiananmen Square and the rule of Mao. My parents made comments about the Cultural Revolution. But I have to admit the sheer extent and specifics contained in this book supplied me with a vast wealth of new information. I was shocked, and then appalled, at the sheer volume of atrocities – many of which were unknown to the outside world at the time. As the author herself writes, Mao was a tyrant on the same scale as Stalin and Hitler, and yet the extent of his brutalities is much less well-known in the popular mind. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a true, accurate account of Maoist China.
10 out of 10
I’m grateful to Jung Chang for this book, which acts as a window for me to look into 20th century China under Mao’s regime. My grandparents left Mao’s China, if they did not, I would have gone through it myself. I shudder at that thought.
It is so good to reread it again now that I’m in my thirties having a more independent view of the world. I don’t think I fully grasp the cruelty and megalomaniacal regimes of Mao when I first read this in my early twenties or late teens. I am not surprised when Jung Chang said that George Orwell’s book sounded like Mao’s regime.
I’m looking forward to read the biography of Mao by Chang and her husband Halliday next.
It is so good to reread it again now that I’m in my thirties having a more independent view of the world. I don’t think I fully grasp the cruelty and megalomaniacal regimes of Mao when I first read this in my early twenties or late teens. I am not surprised when Jung Chang said that George Orwell’s book sounded like Mao’s regime.
I’m looking forward to read the biography of Mao by Chang and her husband Halliday next.
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Not the best book to listen to, maybe will pick it up one day to read it.
Really great book. So informative about the culture of China as is was changing over the years.