Fly, Wild Swans : My Mother, Myself and ChinaFly, Wild Swans : My Mother, Myself and China

Jung Chang's Wild Swans was a tale that defined a generation. It opens with her grandmother's birth - and foot binding - in 1909, when China was under the last emperor, and continues 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'. 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. 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 audiobook 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. 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.