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JUNG CHANG ( ) is the author of the best-selling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China; Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time magazine as an atom bomb of a book ; and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (2013), a New York Times notable book . Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She has won many awards, including the UK Writers' Guild Best Non-Fiction and Book of the Year UK, and has received a number of honorary doctorates from universities in the UK and USA (Buckingham, York, Warwick, Dundee, the Open University, and Bowdoin College, USA). She is an Honorary Fellow of SOAS University of London. Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a barefoot doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York - the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university.
Chang seamlessly chronicles the lives and marriages of the Soong sisters in this captivating triple biography. . . . This juicy tale will satisfy readers interested in politics, world affairs, and family dynamics. --Publishers Weekly One of this autumn's biggest reads, it's an astounding story told with verve and insight --Stylist Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work . . . Its three fairy-tale heroines, poised between east and west, spanned three centuries, two continents and a revolution, with consequences that reverberate, perhaps now more than ever, in all our lives to this day. --The Spectator The book's strongest point is its nuanced sympathy for the sisters . . . The lives of the three Song sisters--the subjects of Jung Chang's spirited new book--are more than worthy of an operatic plot. --The Guardian [Chang] paints China's intense and complex history in bold strokes . . . It is a rollicking ride. --Literary Review Absorbing . . . In this lucid, wise, forgiving biography Chang gives a new twist to an old line. Behind every great man . . . is a Soong sister. --The Times (UK) Utterly engrossing...it stars a trio of extraordinary women, each of whom enjoyed tremendous privilege and fame, but also endured contact attached and mortal danger as well as heartbreak and despair. Their gripping collecting story reads like Wild Swans meets the Mitfords; and the history feels remarkably close to our own times too. --The Bookseller [Chang's] book is well worth reading, in particular for the way it shows how powerful women have helped to shape modern China. At a time when, 70 years after Mao's victory, the country's political leadership contains almost no prominent women at all, that is a particularly apposite message to hear. --The Sunday Times
