The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 (66 page)

Published by Bloomsbury Press, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR

eISBN: 978-1-62040-348-8

First U.S. Edition 2013

This electronic edition published in September 2013

Visit
www.bloomsburypress.com
to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, author interviews, author events, and you
can sign up for newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

Also available by Frank Dikötter

Mao’s Great Famine

The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62

Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2010

‘A must-read’ Jung Chang

Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death.
Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the Western world in less than fifteen years. It lead to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter’s extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

‘A masterly book that should be read not just by anybody interested in modern Chinese history but also by anybody concerned with the way in which a simple idea propagated by an autocratic national leader can lead a country to disaster, in this case to a degree that beggars the imagination’
Observer

‘Written with great narrative verve’ Simon Sebag Montefiore,

‘A brilliant work, backed by painstaking research … This book sheds light on many aspects of the famine but its great importance is to remind us of why we need to revise our understanding of twentieth-century history’ Jasper Becker,
Spectator

‘It is hard to exaggerate the achievement of this book in proving that Mao caused the famine. ... Only thanks to brilliant scholarship such as this will the heirs of the vanished millions finally learn what happened to their ancestors’
Sunday Times

‘A masterpiece of historical investigation into one of the world’s greatest crimes’
New Statesman

Mao’s Great Famine

The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62

Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2010

‘A must-read’ Jung Chang

Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death.
Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the Western world in less than fifteen years. It lead to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter’s extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

‘A masterly book that should be read not just by anybody interested in modern Chinese history but also by anybody concerned with the way in which a simple idea propagated by an autocratic national leader can lead a country to disaster, in this case to a degree that beggars the imagination’
Observer

‘Written with great narrative verve’ Simon Sebag Montefiore,

‘A brilliant work, backed by painstaking research … This book sheds light on many aspects of the famine but its great importance is to remind us of why we need to revise our understanding of twentieth-century history’ Jasper Becker,
Spectator

‘It is hard to exaggerate the achievement of this book in proving that Mao caused the famine. ... Only thanks to brilliant scholarship such as this will the heirs of the vanished millions finally learn what happened to their ancestors’
Sunday Times

‘A masterpiece of historical investigation into one of the world’s greatest crimes’
New Statesman