Description

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The magnificent follow-up to Wild Swans, the multimillion copy, internationally bestselling sensation that traces the history of modern China through the true stories of three generations of courageous women in one family.

“AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN MY GRANDMOTHER became the concubine of a warlord general . . .” So begins Jung Chang’s epic family memoir, Wild Swans, which defines a generation. The book ends in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping opened the door of Communist China, and Jung—twenty-six years old and unstoppably curious, despite years of brainwashing— seized the propitious moment and became one of the first Chinese to leave the tightly sealed country and come to the West. Fly, Wild Swans chronicles her journey and that of her family, along with that of China, as it rose from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power challenging American dominance.

During those decades, although she lives in the West, Jung’s life intertwines with her native land in unexpected ways, a rare relationship made more complex because all her books are banned there. Her family story mirrors the ups and downs of China’s transformation, right up to today, as it enters another watershed. Chairman Xi Jinping’s attempt to return China to the anti-American Maoist past has a devastating impact on Jung’s life: She is unable to go to her mother’s deathbed.

Fly, Wild Swans is Jung’s love letter and emotional tribute to her extraordinary mother. Profoundly moving, it is filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history—both personal and global. Told in Jung’s clear, honest and compelling voice, it is memoir writing at its best.

About the Author

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Jung Chang is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Empress Dowager Cixi; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, as well as Mao: The Unknown Story, with her husband, Jon Halliday. She was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952, and is the first person from the People’s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and to history, and lives in London with her husband.

Praise For…

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“Historian Chang (Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister) parallels China’s political upheavals with the evolution of her and her mother’s relationship in this powerful memoir…. Edifying, heartbreaking, and infuriating, this is tough to shake.”  - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An essential, unexpectedly relevant account of a people divided and turned against themselves by politics.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An enthralling look into modern Chinese history and the impact on a family.” —Booklist
“Chang’s follow-up to her wildly popular 1991 memoir Wild Swans, which has sold some 15 million copies, delves further into her family’s political history within the tumult of 20th-century China, her own 1978 escape to the West via higher education in London and the maternal ties that still bind her to the homeland she left nearly 50 years ago.” — The New York Times
"In her bestselling 1991 memoir, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung recounted the story of her family’s life under the Communist regime, spanning a period through the late 1970s, when, at the age of 26, she left to study in Britain. Now she addresses the following decades, using her personal story to shed light on her ever-transforming, increasingly powerful homeland. Jung’s first book is banned in China, where she’s been unable to return, fearing imprisonment (she wrote a frankly unflattering biography of former leader Mao Zedong)." — AARP