Tombstone : The Untold Story Of Mao's Great Famine - Yang Jisheng

Tombstone

The Untold Story Of Mao's Great Famine

By: Yang Jisheng

Paperback | 31 October 2013 | Edition Number 1

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'I call this book Tombstone. It is a tombstone for my father who died of starvation in 1959, for the thirty-six million Chinese who also starved to death, for the system that brought about their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this book.' More people died in Mao's Great Famine than in the entire First World War, yet this story has remained largely untold, until now. Still banned in China, Tombstone draws on the author's privileged access to official and unofficial sources to uncover the full human cost of the tragedy, and create an unprecedented work of historical reckoning. 'A book of great importance.' Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans 'The first proper history of China's great famine . . . some are already calling Yang 'China's Solzhenitsyn'.' Anne Applebaum, author of Iron Curtain 'One of the best books I've come across in 50 years of reading about China.' Jonathan Mirsky, Spectator, Books of the Year 'A political sensation.' Rana Mitter, Guardian 'Shocking . . . this is the first detailed analysis of the famine written by a Chinese author who lived through it.' Economist 'One of the most important works of history written this century.' Kerry Brown, The Times Higher Education
Industry Reviews
A book of great importance -- Jung Chang, author of 'Wild Swans'
The first proper history of China's great famine ... So thorough is his documentation that some are already calling Yang "China's Solzhenitsyn" -- Anne Applebaum, author of 'Gulag: A History'
In 1989 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Chinese died in the June Fourth massacre in Beijing, and within hours hundreds of millions of people around the world had seen images of it on their television screens. In the late 1950s, also in Communist China, roughly the inverse happened: thirty million or more died while the world, then and now, has hardly noticed. If the cause of the Great Famine had been a natural disaster, this double standard might be more understandable. But the causes, as Yang Jisheng shows in meticulous detail, were political. How can the world not look now? -- Perry Link, University of California, Riverside
Though a sense of deep anger imbues Yang Jisheng's book, it is all the more powerful for its restraint ... Tombstone meticulously demonstrates that the famine was not only vast, but manmade; and not only manmade but political, born of totalitarianism -- Tania Branigan * Guardian *
Tombstone is not just a history but a political sensation ... rich with details ... there is no doubting Yang Jisheng's immense political courage in compiling and writing it ... His book is not just a tombstone for his father and other famine victims, but for the reputation of the Communist party's leadership at a time when they should have acted -- Rana Mitter * Guardian *

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