Jung Chang

Fly, Wild Swans

My Mother, Myself and China

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. Januar 2026
• Englisch
• Gewicht: 646g
• ISBN-13: 9780063480049
• ISBN-10: 0063480042
• Artikelnr.: 74241226

Autorenporträt

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.

Rezensionen

'Painful. Astonishing. Honest. Profoundly revealing as a portrait both of a family and of the deeper traumas that lie at the heart of modern China'

Rory Stewart

'Fly, Wild Swans is another wonder book from Jung Chang. Elegiac and beautifully written, I am quite blown away by it'

Lady Antonia Fraser

'Jung Chang's powerful and profoundly moving sequel to Wild Swans has been well worth the wait. Her and her remarkable mother's story since the end of Wild Swans intertwines fascinatingly with that of national socialist modern China, with their love-filled human story threatened by hideous Communist oppression, all over again. Threatened, but because of their bravery and evident decency, never crushed'

Andrew Roberts

'Far more than a sequel, Fly Wild Swans is the elegiac account by Jung Chang of the literary life that made her famous and the price she has paid for being a loyal daughter. Passages of great beauty speak to her love of Chinese culture alongside unsparing descriptions of life under a cruel system. Her book takes the reader into the private worlds, the trade-offs and the dangers of proximity to power in modern China, showing us how much, and yet so little, has changed since the days when Jung Chang's family suffered during the rule of Chairman Mao. In the author's telling, fear has simply been modernised. It is a persuasive and compelling read'

Michael Sheridan