Red Memory

Tania Branigan is the <i>Guardian</i>'s foreign leader writer; she spent seven years as the <i>Guardian</i>'s China correspondent. Her writing has also appeared in the <i>Washington Post</i> and the <i>Australian</i>. <i>Red Memory i</i>s her first book. <b>An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today<i> Red Memory </i>uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness.</b> <b>Very good and very instructive. It's Mao's Cultural Revolution revisited with all the pain and agony that went with it.</b> <b>Investigative journalism at its best</b> its hard-won access eliciting deep insight... A survey of China's invisible scars that makes <b>essential reading</b> for anyone seeking to better understand the nation today. <b>Dark gripping</b>. Branigan ends with an excellent analysis of how contemporary Chinese politicians seek to mimic the Cultural Revolution while following very different paths. This is <b>a</b> <b>beautifully written and thought-provoking book.</b> <b>A beautifully written and revelatory account of how the unquiet ghosts of the Cultural Revolution haunt China today <i>Red Memory</i> will tell you more about Xi Jinping's rule than any tome on economics. Teasing out universal themes Tania Branigan examines the persistence of memory despite official edicts to forget casting light on human nature as well as on the violent contested history of modern China.</b> <b>The perceptiveness into the human condition and the eloquence of her prose simply took my breath away. <i>Red Memory</i> left me with not a shred of doubt that the Cultural Revolution is still relevant to understanding modern day China as well as the underpinnings of our own 21st century cultural clashes.</b> Tania Branigan has written <b>an exceptional book</b>. <b><i>Red Memory</i> not only exhumes a buried and alarmingly recent history it also offers insights at once deep and clear into universal and timeless questions - of memory and forgetting of horror and what it takes both to survive it and inflict it. It is haunting evocative and written with an almost painful beauty.</b> I cannot recommend it too highly. <b>With the moving voice of a storyteller and the incisive eye of a journalist Tania Branigan brings to life the humanity and devastation of the Cultural Revolution. A veritable masterwork<i> Red Memory </i>proves that that which has been forcibly buried forgotten and erased remains ever relevant to not just our understanding of history and of China but to the human condition the world over. </b> <b>Branigan's ability to weave personal stories into their political context brings this complex story to life. A master class in storytelling and journalism.</b> <b><i>Red Memory</i> is a haunting vivid account of the human legacy and continuing impact of devastating events that notwithstanding our preference for forgetting happened practically yesterday. The author blends history with journalism and empathy with clarity in a breathtaking work that hasn't left my mind since I finished reading it.</b> <b>Unfailingly acute exceptionally humane - a masterpiece.</b> <b>Without understanding the Cultural Revolution and its long-term influence it is impossible to understand today's China. I hope all China experts policymakers think tankers and the public perceive this and read <i>Red Memory</i>.</b> <b>Tania Branigan's evocative enquiry of the haunting and haunted decade of the Cultural Revolution allows her to address one of the thorniest issues for many modern Chinese</b> - how they dare to remember when they have been commanded by the government to forget so much of the country's recent history. Branigan through encounters with people and places directly associated with the epic events of the late 1960s shows that some memories and memory traces are not so easy to erase. <b>And with a journalist's skilful enquiry and a gifted writer's powers of description she is able to show that despite all the efforts that past is still present and shaping the China of today.</b> <i>Red Memory</i> is the story of a society haunted by the ghosts of the past unwilling to confront the hallucinatory violence of the Cultural Revolution yet at the same time unable to bury it. <b>Branigan offers </b><b>nuanced humane portraits of people whose lives were transformed by those years and also teaches the reader much about the politics of memory and about what it's like for a foreign journalist to ask questions about things that have been officially forgotten.</b> <b>A haunting and brilliant exploration of the legacy of the brutal and chaotic decade (1966-76) in which Mao Zedong attempted to destroy his perceived enemies by unleashing the Chinese people on the Communist Party and urging them to purify its ranks . . . Branigan has produced a powerful work that has resonances for us all in the face of growing fractures in our own societies.</b> <b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2023</b><br><b>WINNER OF THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2023</b><b></b><br><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2023</b><br><b>A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR</b><br><b>A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK</b><br><br><b>An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today</b><i><b> Red Memory </b></i><b>uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness.</b><br><br>'Very good and very instructive.' <b>MARGARET ATWOOD</b><br>'Written with an almost painful beauty.' <b>JONATHAN FREEDLAND</b><br>'Took my breath away.' <b>BARBARA DEMICK</b><br>'Haunting.' <b>OLIVER BURKEMAN</b><br><b></b>'A masterpiece.' <b>JULIA LOVELL</b><br><br><i>A 13-year-old Red Guard revels in the great adventure and struggles with her doubts. A silenced composer facing death determines to capture the turmoil. An idealistic student becomes the 'corpse master' . . .</i><br><br>More than fifty years on the Cultural Revolution's scar runs through the heart of Chinese society and through the souls of its citizens. Stationed in Beijing for the <i>Guardian</i> Tania Branigan came to realise that this brutal and turbulent decade continues to propel and shape China to this day. Yet official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists for the most part as an absence.<br><br><i>Red Memory</i> explores the stories of those driven to confront the era who fear or yearn for its return. What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried exploited or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?