Wild Swans, Jung Chang
Wild Swans, Jung Chang
19 Rating(s)
List: $34.99 | Sale: $24.50
Club: $17.49

Wild Swans
Three Daughters of China

Author: Jung Chang

Narrator: Joy Osmanski

Unabridged: 23 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/13/2011


Synopsis

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution.

Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

About Jung Chang

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of York in 1982, the first person from the People’s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She lives in London with her husband, Jon Halliday, with whom she wrote Mao: The Unknown Story.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Martine on July 25, 2008

Wild Swans may well be the most depressing book I've ever read. Don't let that keep you from giving it a try, though, for by some strange mechanism, it also ranks among the most uplifting books I've read, chronicling as it does a courage, resilience and will to survive which are nothing short of riv......more

Goodreads review by Lisa of Troy on September 16, 2023

Do you know who the President of China is? This might be a trick question..... Isn’t it strange that most Americans don’t know the names of world leaders? No time like the present to read this book! This week, CNN published this article: [URL not allowed] In the United States, 1......more

Goodreads review by Magrat on September 16, 2017

'Cisnes salvajes' es el relato de la juventud de la autora, la historia de su madre y de su abuela, mujeres increíblemente valientes que tuvieron que pasar por el infierno de nacer en la China del siglo XX. Creo que es uno de esos libros con los que es imposible no enfurecerse o llorar de rabia y tri......more

Goodreads review by Raya راية on April 10, 2019

"إذا كان لديك الحُب يكون حتى الماء العادي البارد حلو المذاق." كلمات الجدة يو فانغ كانت البداية في شهر مارس/آذار من عام 2013، -كان الفصل الأخير لي في الجامعة- تحديداً في مادة الأدب الفرنسي المُعاصر، طُلب منّا قراءة رواية من الأدب الفرانكوفوني لغايات الامتحانات، وهي "بلزاك والخياطة الصينية الصغيرة"ل......more