JULIA LOVELL is Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of The Great Wall and The Opium War, which won the 2012 Jan Michalski Prize. Her many translations of modern Chinese fiction into English include The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China. She writes about China for several newspapers, including The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Surprisingly, the story of Maoism outside China has never been told. Now, at last, we have this scintillating, sweeping narrative. It is a book packed with jaw-dropping stories, told with the pace and punch of a thriller. Chilling, but exhilaratingly readable, as a warning from history this book could not be more timely. --Michael Wood, historian and broadcaster Julia Lovell has given us a masterful corrective to the greatest misconception about today's China. For too long, visitors who marveled at China's new luxuries and capitalist zeal assumed that Maoism had gone the way of its creator. That was a mistake. Lovell's account--eloquent, engrossing, intelligent--not only explains why Xi Jinping has revived some of Mao's techniques, but also why Mao's playbook for the 'People's War' retains an intoxicating and tragic appeal to marginalized people the world over. --Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China A landmark work giving a global panorama of Mao's ideology filled with historic events and enlivened by striking characters. --Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of Modern China