The Tragedy of Liberation ( Frank Dikötter)

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.
 
In 1949 Mao Zedong hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City. Instead of liberating the country, the communists destroyed the old order and replaced it with a repressive system that would dominate every aspect of Chinese life.
 
In an epic of revolution and violence which draws on newly opened party archives, interviews and memoirs, Frank Dikotter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the brutal politics of Mao's court.
 
Told with great narrative sweep, The Tragedy of Liberation is a powerful and important document giving voice at last to the millions who were lost, and casting new light on the foundations of one of the most powerful regimes of the twenty-first century.
 
Frank Dikötter is a Dutch historian who specialises in modern China. He has been Chair Professor of Humanities in the Faculty of Arts at The University of Hong Kong since 2006. Before moving to Asia in 2006, he was Professor of the Modern History of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He has published nine books about the history of China, including Mao's Great Famine, which won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2011. He lives in Hong Kong.