A groundbreaking chronicle of the violent early years of the People's Republic of China by the author of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize-winning Mao's Great Famine.

"The Chinese Communist party refers to its victory in 1949 as a 'liberation.' In China the story of liberation and the revolution that followed is not one of peace, liberty, and justice. It is first and foremost a story of calculated terror and systematic violence." So begins Frank Dikotter's stunning and revelatory chronicle of Mao Zedong's ascension and campaign to transform the Chinese into what the party...

An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China.

"Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than fifteen years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives."

So opens Frank Dikotter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much...