Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

A new edition of one of the best-selling and best-loved books of recent years, with a new introduction by the author. The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling 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. Few books have ever had such an impact on their readers. 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 twentieth century, from sword-bearing warlords to Chairman Mao, from the Manchu Empire to the Cultural Revolution. 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. For this new edition, Jung Chang has written a new introduction, bringing her own story up to date, and describing the effect Wild Swans’ success has had on her life.

‘It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book’ Mary Wesley

‘Everything about Wild Swans is extraordinaryIt arouses all the emotions, such as pity and terror, that great tragedy is supposed to evoke, and also a complex mixture of admiration, despair and delight at seeing a luminous intelligence directed at the heart of darkness’ Minette Marrin, Sunday Telegraph

‘Immensely moving and unsettling; an unforgettable portrait of the brain-death of a nation’ J.G. Ballard, Sunday Times

‘Wild Swans made me feel like a five-year-old. This is a family memoir that has the breadth of the most enduring social history’ Martin Amis, Independent on Sunday

‘There has never been a book like this’ Edward Behr, Los Angeles Times

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was briefly a Red Guard at the age of fourteen, and then a peasant, a ‘barefoot doctor’, a steelworker and an electrician. She came to Britain in 1978, and in 1982 became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She lives in London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780007166114
ISBN 10	0007166117
Title	Wild Swans
Author	Jung Chang
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers
Year published	2003-08-18
Number of pages	704
Prizes	Winner of British Books Award 1993, Winner of NCR Book Award 1992
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.