Why read The Killing Wind?

Book cover of The Killing Wind: A Chinese County's Descent Into Madness During the Cultural Revolution

Book description

A spasm of extreme radicalism that rocked China to its foundations in the mid- to late 1960s, the Cultural Revolution has generated a vast literature. Much of it, however, is at a birds-eye level, and we have very few detailed accounts of how it worked on the ground. Long after…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Killing Wind as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Kerry Brown

Author

A searing account by a retired Chinese journalist of the impact of social unrest and factional clashes in a rural area of central Hunan province in the late 1960s during the Cultural Revolution. Tan’s haunting account starts with his memories of passing through this area around the time the events he goes on to recount as a young journalist decades before. With research and investigation, he finds that the quiet but unsettling place he remembers witnessing was in fact consumed by murder and bloodshed. Some of these events he documents. A book that describes but does not judge, making its…

From Kerry's list on The best books on modern Chinese history.