The second installment in 'The People's Trilogy', the groundbreaking series from Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author Frank Dikötter

‘For anyone who wants to understand the current Beijing regime, this is essential background reading’ Anne Applebaum
 
‘Essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions’  Guardian
 
‘Dikötter performs here a tremendous service by making legible the hugely controversial origins of the present Chinese political order’ Timothy Snyder

In 1949 Mao Zedong hoisted the red flag over Beijing’s Forbidden City.  Instead of liberating the country, the communists destroyed the old  order and replaced it with a repressive system that would dominate every  aspect of Chinese life.

In an epic of revolution and violence which  draws on newly opened party archives, interviews and memoirs, Frank  Dikötter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the  brutal politics of Mao’s court. A gripping account of how people from  all walks of life were caught up in a tragedy that sent at least five  million civilians to their deaths.