FLY WILD SWANS EB

Jung Chang

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780008661076, 9780008775803
• eBook ISBN: 9780008661083
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS, THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION

A Book of the Year in The Times; Daily Telegraph; Financial Times and Waterstones

'A must-read … magnificent' DAILY TELEGRAPH *****

'Beautiful and moving' ELIF SHAFAK, OBSERVER

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 in 1909 with her grandmother's birth – and foot-binding – when China was under the last emperor, moving through Mao Zedong's rule, especially the Cultural Revolution during which Jung's parents were subjected to horrendous ordeals because of their courage. It finishes in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping officially ended the Mao era and started the '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 global 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 dealing with the regime in those years were rich and revealing – 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 are often recalled in this book. In fact, the past is never far away in Jung's subsequent life. It has shaped her, and moulded the present China, and what's more, it promises to herald the future.

China is now at another watershed moment with the era of Chairman Xi Jinping greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother. Fly, Wild Swans is Jung's heartfelt response to that experience, and a book filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history – both personal and global. Ultimately uplifting, told in Jung's clear, honest and compelling voice, it is memoir writing at its best.

'Profoundly revealing as a portrait both of a family and of the deeper traumas that lie at the heart of modern China' RORY STEWART

'Another wonder book from Jung Chang…I am quite blown away by it' LADY ANTONIA FRASER

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• A FEW KEY DATES
• MAP
• PROLOGUE
• 1 Childhood in Mao’s China (1952–66)
• 2 My Brave Parents in the Cultural Revolution (1966–78)
• 3 Out of the Cage (1978–79)
• 4 Finding My Freedom (1979–82)
• 5 An Emotional Reunion (1983)
• 6 To Chengdu with Western Capitalists (mid-1980s)
• 7 What Deng Xiaoping’s Stepmother Told Me (1985–87)
• 8 My Mother Meets the Love of My Life (1984–88)
• 9 Wild Swans Taking Wing (1988–91)
• 10 Joy and Sadness in the Days after Wild Swans (the 1990s)
• 11 Getting to Mao’s Inner Circle (the 1990s)
• 12 Navigating Peril in Sichuan (the 1990s)
• 13 Kidney Stones and Poison Plots (the 1990s)
• 14 Journeys on the Trail of Blood (the 1990s)
• 15 Around the Globe in Pursuit of Mao (the 1990s)
• 16 Mao Exposed (2001–06)
• 17 ‘Renounce Your Book or Else …’ (2007–08)
• 18 Up Close with the State Security (2008–11)
• 19 The Return of Mao’s Ghost (2012–13)
• 20 Why I Can’t Go to My Mother’s Deathbed (2014–24)
• PICTURE ILLUSTRATIONS
• EPILOGUE
• FOOTNOTES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• ABOUT THE PUBLISHER