<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

Chairman Mao devours his foes

Cannibalism is added to Maoism’s many other crimes in Frank Dikötter’s final searing volume of A People’s History

30 April 2016

9:00 AM

30 April 2016

9:00 AM

The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976 Frank Dikötter

Bloomsbury, pp.382, £25, ISBN: 9781408856499

The Cowshed: Memories of the Cultural Revolution Ji Xianlin, translated by Chenxin Jiang

New York Review of Books, pp.188, £14.99, ISBN: 9781590179260

Frank Dikötter, professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and winner of the Samuel Johnson prize in 2011, is the author of many studies on China, most notably two on Mao’s dark rule. This new book completes the trilogy. The first volume, The Tragedy of Liberation, made plain, more exhaustively than previous accounts, that from the beginning of his time as Chairman, Mao was paranoid and murderous, and that Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping egged him on.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Subscribe for just $2 a week

Try a month of The Spectator Australia absolutely free and without commitment. Not only that but – if you choose to continue – you’ll pay just $2 a week for your first year.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

'The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976', £21.00 and 'The Cowshed: Memories of the Cultural Revolution', £12.49 are available from the Spectator Bookshop, Tel: 08430 600033. Jonathan Mirsky is a historian of China and a former East Asia editor of the Times.

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close