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The second installment in ´The People´s Trilogy´, the groundbreaking series from Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author Frank Dikötter

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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 Dikötter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the brutal politics of Mao´s court. A gripping account of how people from all walks of life were caught up in a tragedy that sent at least five million civilians to their deaths.

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A brilliant and powerful account of the formation of that society ... Nobody who reads about the cost of the establishment of the PRC in Dikotter´s humane and lucid prose will find much sympathy for the authoritarian case. This excellent book is horrific but essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world´s most important revolutions Guardian

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Dikötter, Frank
Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has pioneered the use of archival sources and published a dozen books that have changed the way historians view China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to his last book entitled The Cultural Revolution: A People´s History, 1962-1976 (2016). His new book, Dictators and their Cult of Personality, is due for publication in September 2019. Frank Dikötter is married and lives in Hong Kong.

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