Fly, Wild Swans

THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS, THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION

Jung Chang·s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation 2the story of ¶three daughters
of China·Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution.
Fly, Wild Swans is, quite simply, what happened next.

Jung Chang arrived in the UK in 1978 aged 26, part of a Chinese scholarship programme for
study abroad. Finding herself in the London of punk, political protests and Ziggy Stardust, she
felt as if she·d landed on the moon. She and her fellow students had all grown up in complete
isolation from the west, living in fear as to what might happen if they broke any of the strict rules imposed upon them by their government. It was an invaluable opportunity but came at a cost of long-term separation from her mother and family in China.

As Jung began to adjust to life in the West, she warmed to the fashion scene, rebelled and
thrived. Her studies took off and she became the first person from the People·s Republic of
China to be awarded a doctorate from a British university.

Fly, Wild Swans is, in many ways, Jung·s love letter to her mother set against China·s
development from the relative freedoms of the late-1970s and untrammelled capitalism of the
1990s to the current authoritarian repressive rule of Xi-Jinping.

About the Author:
Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a red guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a barefoot doctor·a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a PhD in linguistics in 1982 2the first person from the People·s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She is the author of the best-selling Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, and, along with her husband Jon Halliday, of the biography, Mao: The Unknown Story. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies, in addition to millions in pirated.

Author Biography

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was a red guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a ‘barefoot doctor’, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a PhD in linguistics in 1982 – the first person from the People’s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She is the author of the best-selling Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, and, along with her husband Jon Halliday, of the biography, Mao: The Unknown Story. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies, in addition to millions in pirated editions and computer downloads in mainland China where both books are banned. Among the many awards she has won are the UK Writers’ Guild Best Non-Fiction (1992) and Book of the Year UK (1993). Her latest book Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, was published in 2013.