At the Edge of Empire

Edward Wong

Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Publication Date: 27/06/2024 ISBN: 9781788162654 Category:
Hardback

£25.00

Out of stock

Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

‘A brilliant personal account of China’s borderlands and peoples’ Francis Fukuyama

‘Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find’ Barbara Demick

In 1962, Edward Wong’s father, disillusioned with Communism, fled China for Hong Kong and later the USA. From then on, he rarely spoke of his homeland, or his years crisscrossing the country in Mao’s People’s Liberation Army.
Much later, Edward became Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, and was drawn into investigating his father’s past even as he assessed a resurgent China under Xi Jinping. Witnessing civil rights struggles in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, Wong reached a deeper understanding of his family and the nation. This chronicle of nearly a century of momentous change reveals China as it catapulted into the superpower age.

Publisher Review

A brilliant personal account of China’s borderlands and peoples-Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mongols, Tibetans … full of insight and compassion — Francis Fukuyama Astonishing … A humane, moving story against a massive canvas of China’s rise to power — Rana Mitter, author * China’s Good War * Utterly gripping and original … an unforgettable account of the country’s recent past and present — Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London and author * Maoism: A Global History * In the age of the instant expert, Edward Wong is the real thing … [A] blend of epic family memoir and deeply insightful reporting on the rise of an increasingly autocratic China under Xi Jinping — Edward Luce, Financial Times columnist and author * The Retreat of Western Liberalism * A fascinating read … a beautifully-written personal account of China’s rise to a superpower … vividly told — Hsiao-Hung Pai, journalist and author * Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants * Edward Wong’s exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America’s finest reporters on China could deliver … A profound story of modern China itself — Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author * Age of Ambition * Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find … [Brings] it all vividly to life in a way no other book on China has for me — Barbara Demick, author * Eat the Buddha and Nothing to Envy * A seamless and engaging hybrid narrative that reminds us it’s people who write history — Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and author of more than a dozen books on China, including the recent novel * My Old Home * This sparkling book … tells a story of greater China that is both intimately personal and fundamentally global, a journey steeped in trauma, nostalgia, and even poetry that only [Wong’s] reporting talents could conjure — Ishaan Tharoor, foreign affairs columnist * Washington Post * It is rare for a book to combine past and present, personal history and the history of a vast nation with such thoughtfulness, grace, and panache — Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author * Our Country Friends * A true epic and an extraordinary work of reportage. The son of two empires, Edward Wong is admirably clear-eyed in his ability to weave the personal and intimate with the monumental — Te-Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal correspondent and author * Land of Big Numbers * A masterpiece … a must-read for anyone with the faintest interest in China, America’s relationship with China, and the whole question of empire in the contemporary world — John Delury, author * Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China *

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