Jung Chang: First Love

Jung Chang  is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, 1991, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in mainland China.

“I would recommend Turgenev’s First Love. I read it when I was 16, exiled to a mountain village on the edge of the Himalayas, fell ill – and yearned for love. The mood of the book affected me deeply. I still remember many passages to this day.”

Her 832-page biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the British historian Jon Halliday, was published in June 2005 and is a highly researched description of Mao Zedong’s life and work. In 2013, Chang also published a biography of Empress Dowager Cixi, who led China from 1861 until her death in 1908.

Wild Swans was adapted for the stage and ran at the Young Vic in April 2012.