Author: Aiping Mu
Little Brown and Company $39.95
A sweeping family history, encompassing almost a century of China's dramatic story. Reaching back to family stories from 1916 and up to 1988, it ends with an epilogue that concludes at 2000.
Eight hundred pages of marriages, births, deaths, politics, privileged childhoods shattered into many pieces by revolution - it's a must for sinophiles, but somewhat dry for the general reader.
Aiping Mu's parents were initially close to the top of the Communist hierarchy but were torn apart by the Cultural Revolution. They were classed as counter-revolutionaries and imprisoned, while Aiping (born in 1951) was exiled as a teenager to a remote village.
There is no blame apportioned; Aiping Mu, who now lives in England, has been determined to show "that we are all products of the society that we live in."
<i>Books:</i> Vermilion Gate, A Family Story Of Communist China
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