Fly, wild swans

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, an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother - ´three daughters of China´. The book opens with her grandmother´s birth - and foot binding - in 1909, when China was under the last emperor, through Mao Zedong´s rule and the Cultural Revolution during which Jung´s parents were subject to unbelievable ordeals. It finishes in 1978 when the Mao era officially ended, and Deng Xiaoping started the post-Mao ´Reforms´. Jung, at that propitious juncture, became one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China for the West.Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power, the challenger to the United States´ dominant position in the world. Through those decades, Jung´s life has been intimately entwined with her native land. Her experiences in those years were rich and complex - especially so because all her books were (and are) banned.Fly, Wild Swans is the follow-up to Wild Swans and brings the story of Jung´s family - along with that of China - up to date. The book is in many ways Jung´s love letter to her mother. It is inevitably also about her grandmother and father both of whom died tragically in the Cultural Revolution, but they are often recalled in this book. In fact, the past is never far away in Jung´s subsequent life.