Confessions An Innocent Life in Communist China [Paperback]

[A] remarkable memoir about growing up in Maos China&Mr. Kang serves as an extraordinary guide through an extraordinary period of Chinese history. He lives through the Great Leap forward, the Cultural Revolution, the thaw following Maos death, the growing democracy movement of the 1980s and the crackdown after the protests at Tiananmen Square. Simply as a documentary record of daily life in China, Confessions is a rewarding read, but Mr. Kang, a gifted stylist (well served by his translator, Susan Wilf) has transmuted his struggles into a literary work of high distinction.A rich, moving, and unique memoir. Through its honest and intimate language, it attains a kind of universality, vivid, painful, and entirely authentic.A haunting, frightening, and ultimately inspiring story.Absorbing&Kangs story is a lively, intricate account of communisms panoptic police state&Kangs rugged individualism takes his story beyond the usual narrative of persecution and hardship, making it an incisive, personal critique of a deeply conformist society.The perspective is fresh, the writing fresher, and the analysis, which is built into the stories rather than added afterwards, is freshest of all. A mesmerizing read&A literary work of high distinction. William Grimes,