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THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS , THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION Jung Chang''s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation - the story of ''three daughters of China'': Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution. Fly, Wild Swans is, quite simply, what happened next. Jung Chang arrived in the UK in 1978 aged 26, part of a Chinese scholarship programme for study abroad. Finding herself in the London of punk, political protests and Ziggy Stardust, she felt as if she''d landed on the moon. She and her fellow students had all grown up in complete isolation from the west, living in fear as to what might happen if they broke any of the strict rules imposed upon them by their government. It was an invaluable opportunity but came at a cost of long-term separation from her mother and family in China. As Jung began to adjust to life in the West, she warmed to the fashion scene, rebelled and thrived. Her studies took off and she became the first person from the People''s Republic of China to be awarded a doctorate from a British university. Fly, Wild Swans is, in many ways, Jung''s love letter to her mother set against China''s development from the relative freedoms of the late-1970s and untrammelled capitalism of the 1990s to the current authoritarian repressive rule of Xi-Jinping. With vivid flashbacks to her family''s experience in communist China, the book offers an extraordinary account of Jung''s research into the genocidal regime of Mao Tse-Tung, the many fictions she uncovered and the political consequences of publishing her subsequent biography. As Jung becomes a successful academic and writer in the West, Fly, Wild Swans demonstrates how much she relies on her mother still living in China and the painful years in which politics has prevented them meeting. Through the arc of their respective lives, she gives an immersive, deeply moving and unforgettable account of what it is like to live in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order. It is family history at its best. ...
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A Best Book of the Year in The Times; Daily Telegraph; Financial Times and Waterstones
'BEAUTIFUL AND MOVING... Braiding her own story with that of her mother's, Chang skilfully sheds light on the transformation that the nation as a whole has gone through. [She] never shies away from addressing the problems of the regime while at the same time expressing her love for the culture and the people. She displays an extraordinary courage, even at the expense of personal risk or risk to her family. Almost half a century on, writing with unflinching determination once again, Chang has published a sequel to Wild Swans, but one that reads perfectly well on its own'
ELIF SHAFAK, OBSERVER
'No 1990s bookshelf looked complete without Jung Chang's Wild Swans. This magnificent sequel picks up the thread. It's the story of how Chang makes a life as a writer in the West, and how China then responds to her success. SUPERB'
HELEN BROWN, DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Few can match Chang's ability to bring Chinese history and politics to life through deeply felt personal narrative, and few have shaped western understanding of China as broadly ... this story of suffering and success has the air of a closing chapter, a reckoning with both her achievements and the cost of the path she chose'
GUARDIAN
'Chang's use of personal and intimate experience to make unfathomable political events accessible works as triumphantly today as it did 34 years ago when Wild Swans burst on to the scene'
BOOK OF THE WEEK, SUNDAY TIMES
'Readers cherish Chang's books for offering glimpses of a vast and opaque nation. Fly, Wild Swans again demonstrates Chang's ability to explore subject matter of significant weight in prose that is a pleasure to read'
I PAPER
'Packed with poignant snapshots of family history and juicy episodes of literary life under state scrutiny ... the follow-up to her 1991 bestseller is both a tribute to her uncrushable mother and a powerful portrait of censorship and shifting attitudes in Xi's China'
FINANCIAL TIMES
