For some time now I would like to have brought this book to you.
Published last year, its author is a Dutch historian who has written very, very well, about China. In Macau, one day came to show his work at the University of St. Joseph, where I had the opportunity to hear him out loud, but at the cost of this invitation the French professor and political scientist who taught there Had invited him. In any case, despite these circumstances and opportunisms of convenience so unchristian, always coming from where it would least be expected in the XXI century and on which the history will not pray, the work of Frank Dikötter is internationally recognized.
He previously wrote Mao's Great Famine, which in 2011 won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, and The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957. This time with The Cultural Revolution - The People's History 1962-1976, of which I do not know if a Portuguese translation already exists, the author focuses on one of the most troubled and yet unknown periods of China's recent history.
I must say that the excellence of his work lies beyond his recognized qualities as a researcher in the access he had first hand to classified documents of the Chinese Communist Party, to police reports and to the original speeches of the Chinese leaders before corrections . Considered a masterful book by the New Statesman, it deserved pages in The Guardian, Julia Lovell and Rana Mitter, but also in the New York Times, the South China Morning Post and many other newspapers and magazines.
The cover that I reproduce above is the first edition of 2017, from Bloomsbury, which I own, and I strongly recommend this book to all those who are interested in these issues and do not like to stay in the branch of what is impinged on them, especially Now that we have quickly approached the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which many believe in, will introduce significant changes in the direction of leadership, further consolidating the position of someone who, as has been written, now has more power than that That Mao ever got.
