This was so good. There’s nothing like history told by a person who has lived through it. Jung Chang not only tells her own story – living through the Cultural Revolution in China – but that of her mother and her grandmother.

Her grandmother was the concubine of a warlord in Manchuria, but managed to escape with her infant daughter, and then married a doctor. Jung Chang’s mother lived under the Kuomintang and worked undercover for the Communist rebels, then became an official in the Communist Party in Sichuan, and finally was denounced and persecuted. Jung Chang was one of five children, and she witnessed her father’s transition from a highly principled and idealistic official to a broken man. Gradually Jung Chang herself lost her belief in Mao.

I was mesmerized, shocked and educated by this memoir, and would recommend it to anyone who wants a more complete picture of China during the 50s and 60s.