At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China

(Paperback, Main)

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'A brilliant personal account of China's borderlands and peoples' Francis Fukuyama'Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find' Barbara DemickIn 1962, Edward Wong's father, disillusioned with Communism, fled China for Hong Kong and later the USA. From then on, he rarely spoke of his homeland, or his years crisscrossing the country in Mao's People's Liberation Army.Much later, Edward became Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, and was drawn into investigating his father's past even as he assessed a resurgent China under Xi Jinping. Witnessing civil rights struggles in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, Wong reached a deeper understanding of his family and the nation. This chronicle of nearly a century of momentous change reveals China as it catapulted into the superpower age.

Reviews

'A brilliant personal account of China's borderlands and peoples-Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mongols, Tibetans ... full of insight and compassion' - Francis Fukuyama

'Finely crafted ... At the Edge of Empire is valuable both on a political and personal level, and opens up the complexities of Chinese politics and Chinese life in a way that general readers will find fascinating ... deeply satisfying' - John Simpson

'Arresting ... a family history that exposes China's authoritarian regime and an era of repression' - Financial Times

'Astonishing ... A humane, moving story against a massive canvas of China's rise to power' - Rana Mitter, author

'Utterly gripping and original ... an unforgettable account of the country's recent past and present' - Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London and author

Author Bio

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, where has served as a war correspondent in Iraq and as the Beijing bureau chief. He is the winner of the Livingston Award for international reporting, and has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He lives with his family in Washington, DC.