Fly, Wild Swans

THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS , THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION Jung Chang''s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation - the story of ''three daughters of China'': Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution. Fly, Wild Swans is, quite simply, what happened next. Jung Chang arrived in the UK in 1978 aged 26, part of a Chinese scholarship programme for study abroad. Finding herself in the London of punk, political protests and Ziggy Stardust, she felt as if she''d landed on the moon. She and her fellow students had all grown up in complete isolation from the west, living in fear as to what might happen if they broke any of the strict rules imposed upon them by their government. It was an invaluable opportunity but came at a cost of long-term separation from her mother and family in China. As Jung began to adjust to life in the West, she warmed to the fashion scene, rebelled and thrived. Her studies took off and she became the first person from the People''s Republic of China to be awarded a doctorate from a British university. Fly, Wild Swans is, in many ways, Jung''s love letter to her mother set against China''s development from the relative freedoms of the late-1970s and untrammelled capitalism of the 1990s to the current authoritarian repressive rule of Xi-Jinping. With vivid flashbacks to her family''s experience in communist China, the book offers an extraordinary account of Jung''s research into the genocidal regime of Mao Tse-Tung, the many fictions she uncovered and the political consequences of publishing her subsequent biography. As Jung becomes a successful academic and writer in the West, Fly, Wild Swans demonstrates how much she relies on her mother still living in China and the painful years in which politics has prevented them meeting. Through the arc of their respective lives, she gives an immersive, deeply moving and unforgettable account of what it is like to live in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order. It is family history at its best. ...

Autorentext

Jung Chang

Klappentext

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS, THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION

A Book of the Year in The Times; Daily Telegraph; Financial Times and Waterstones

**'A must-read ... magnificent'**DAILY TELEGRAPH *****

**'Beautiful and moving'**ELIF SHAFAK, OBSERVER

Jung Chang's Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation, an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother - 'three daughters of China'. The book opens in 1909 with her grandmother's birth - and foot-binding - when China was under the last emperor, moving through Mao Zedong's rule, especially the Cultural Revolution during which Jung's parents were subjected to horrendous ordeals because of their courage. It finishes in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping officially ended the Mao era and started the 'reforms'. Jung, at that propitious juncture, became one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China for the West.

Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit and isolated state to a global power, the challenger to the United States' dominant position in the world. Through those decades, Jung's life has been intimately entwined with her native land. Her experiences dealing with the regime in those years were rich and revealing - especially so because all her books were (and are) banned.

Fly, Wild Swans is the follow-up to Wild Swans and brings the story of Jung's family - along with that of China - up to date. The book is in many ways Jung's love letter to her mother. It is inevitably also about her grandmother and father, both of whom died tragically in the Cultural Revolution but are often recalled in this book. In fact, the past is never far away in Jung's subsequent life. It has shaped her, and moulded the present China, and what's more, it promises to herald the future.

China is now at another watershed moment with the era of Chairman Xi Jinping greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother. Fly, Wild Swans is Jung's heartfelt response to that experience, and a book filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history - both personal and global. Ultimately uplifting, told in Jung's clear, honest and compelling voice, it is memoir writing at its best.

'Profoundly revealing as a portrait both of a family and of the deeper traumas that lie at the heart of modern China' RORY STEWART

'Another wonder book from Jung Chang...I am quite blown away by it' LADY ANTONIA FRASER