China in Ten Words
by Yu HuaTranslated by Allan H. Barr
Vintage, 2012
Yu Hua’s searching essays distill modern China into riffs on just 10 words. Essays centered on terms such as “people,” “leader,” “reading,” and “revolution” reach back to Yu’s childhood during the Cultural Revolution, when he witnessed extrajudicial executions. Later, he turns to the present day: Violence on the scale of the Cultural Revolution, Yu argues, is still officially sanctioned, now in the form of forcible demolitions that evict homeowners in favor of rapid property development.
Mao’s Last Revolution
by Roderick MacFarquhar & Michael Schoenhals
Harvard University Press, 2006
The most nuanced, in-depth history accessible to the general reader, MacFarquhar and Schoenhals’s authoritative account tracks the interactions between Communist Party elites at every stage of the Cultural Revolution.…
