“There is a big clampdown today,” she says. With this week’s London Book Fair focusing on China, Chang is pessimistic about the literary life of her homeland. In fact, its chances of publication there are slimmer than they were in the mid-Nineties, says Chang - as is any mention of the murderous rule of Mao Tse-tung, the leader of communist China from 1949 to 1976. At the heart of the book lies Jung’s mother, a communist official who was denounced, held in detention and cruelly tortured during the purges of the Cultural Revolution.Īs an adapted version of Wild Swans finally reaches the London stage, the book itself, which has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide, is still banned in China. Hailed as a masterpiece in the West, it tells the story of brutal political upheaval in China over three generations of her family - beginning with her grandmother, married in 1924 as a concubine to a Chinese warlord, with crushed and bound feet, and ending with Jung herself, who was briefly a Red Guard and eventually a refugee in London. T has been 21 years since Jung Chang published her landmark book Wild Swans, yet it still has the power to terrify and deeply move. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.At times terrifying, at times astonishing, always deeply moving, 'Wild Swans' is a book in a million, a true story with all the passion and grandeur of a great novel.įor this new edition, Jung Chang has written a new introduction, bringing her own story up to date, and describing the effect the success of 'Wild Swans' has had on her life. Through the story of three generations of women - grandmother, mother and daughter - 'Wild Swans' tells nothing less than the whole tumultuous history of China's tragic 20th-century, from sword-bearing warlords to Chairman Mao, from the Manchu Empire to the Cultural Revolution. Not only did it become the bestselling 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.įew books have ever had such an impact on their readers.

The publication of 'Wild Swans' in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. A new edition of one of the bestselling and best-loved books of recent years, with a new introduction by the author.

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