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Wild Swans. JUNG CHANG. BBC Omnibus.
The book Wild Swans by Jung Chang has captured the attention not only of students of China, but also of the educated public as no other book on China since Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai. Published in 1991, the book has already gone through fourteen printings, and 172,000 copies are in print in the paperback edition. It was on the bestseller list in Great Britain for 63 weeks and has been translated into many languages.
This story of three generations of Chinese women living through the warlord period, the war with Japan, the civil war, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China through the Cultural Revolution obviously has an appeal that goes beyond an interest in China. It is a rich, moving account of the lives of three ordinary, yet extraordinary Chinese women, living through the...