I had just finished reading the historian Frank Dikötter's ‘Mao's Great Famine'. What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you? I unreservedly recommend this superb and well narrated book. A period of madness that also obliterated much of China’s proud cultural heritage and scarred the lives of a generation. It’s sad how the early optimism that Mao’s take-over of the country would create a more equal society degenerated into a highly hierarchical regime of fear and cruelty, a ruined economy, mass starvation and millions of deaths. Hitler and Stalin are rightly vilified, but, I think Mao outdid them in his megalomania. I knew that he’d ruined the country by his extreme version of communism but hadn’t realised quite how vicious he and his henchmen were during the cultural revolution. I was engrossed throughout by the bravery and tenacity of victims of the different regimes the worst of which by far was that of Mao. Lives made so grim by the injustices heaped on the women and their families that I felt fury on their behalf. The 20th history of China is told through the personal experiences of three generations of women, including the author, who writing in the first person, brings the suffering and enormous social upheavals painfully to life. This is one of the most memorable books I’ve listened to or read.
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