Customer Reviews
A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow - By: Trevor Coote, 04 Dec 2008 
This haunting personal odyssey through the political & social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will lingerin the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs & memories the turbulent & tragic lives of her grandparents & parentsin Manchuria earlyin the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later & the brief & cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to bein a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party wasin power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of Chinain Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists & supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass & barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling & terrorising the population. Their actions cloakedin totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down & persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' & `capitalist-roaders'in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise & fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned & exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism resultsin the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resultingin an apocalyptic famine & the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather & after a slight dropin his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered & impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren & students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat & destroy their teachers & consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious & historical sites, statues, temples & old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyonein order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' & there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite & powerful book follows the author & her siblings through these terrifying phases & is a compulsive page-turner writtenin clear, delicate English & brimming with pain & sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest & poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought & deed.
The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!! - By: J. Julian, 22 Oct 2008 I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a bookin all my life. This book is truely amazing & is well & truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.
Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.
I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wallin August 2008 & felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!
No one told me this book was bannedin China. Soin my hand luggage it went, luckily I, & the book, made it there & back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!
This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!
An accessible history - By: M. Rooney, 16 Oct 2008 One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching & heartfelt, yet matter of fact & never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family & a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.
worth it - By: OK, 15 Oct 2008 Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this & a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.
The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book isin the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.
As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around & all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.
I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time & found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)
An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women - By: A. Faulkner, 02 Oct 2008 This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimesin the most brutal fashion.
Based on the lives of three generations of women, it startsin turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble & that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward & the Cultural Revolution before endingin the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.
This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst & most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many thingsin this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties & freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their livesin a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.
Allin all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear & brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.
