Publisher details

Author: Jung Chang
Publisher: HarperCollins
Genres: Biography and Memoir, True Story
Released: 09 January, 1991
ISBN: 9780007463404

Wild Swans

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Synopsis

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.#63 in ABC My Favourite Book

About the author

Jung Chang

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a red guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1982 - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British University. Jung Chang lives in London and teaches the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.