Mao: The Unknown Story (now in Almanac store)

Biography strips away myths of Mao

Chinese leader shown as monster who took pleasure in torture

"Within a year, the book will be translated into Chinese. It will be banned in China, of course, but it will find its way in nevertheless, mostly on CDs, and it will find fascinated but appalled readers in every corner of the country. Nothing will change right away, but over time it will probably have the same impact on how Chinese see their own history and the party that rules over them that Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' had on Russians.

"The book is Mao: The Unknown Story, a massively researched biography of the Great Helmsman that strips all the flattering myths away and reveals the founder of China's Communist regime as a monster with no redeeming qualities whatever. The authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, spent 10 years trawling through previously untapped archives and interviewing literally hundreds of people who were close to Mao Tse-tung at some point in his life, and the picture they draw of the man is as definitive as it is repellent.

"He was a mass murderer on an even bigger scale than Hitler or Stalin -- and unlike them, he took a sadistic pleasure in watching films of his victims being tortured and killed. The one heroic episode of his career that has never before been challenged, the 6,000-mile Long March that began in 1934, turns out to have been a fraud. His Nationalist enemies never tried to stop his army, but rather shepherded it through various areas where they wanted to frighten the local warlords into submission. And he didn't actually march; most of the way he was carried in a bamboo litter ... "
Source: Charlotte Observer

Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang (author of Wild Swans) is now available by pre-order in our store, Cafe Diem! Reduced from $35.00 to $23.10. Have it delivered to your home on publication.

Jung Chang is currently in Australia. Listen to July 19 interview.