At the Edge of Empire by Edward Wong

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I will begin by saying that I prepared for the “worst case scenario” for my medical procedure on January 27  to remove cancer cells from my face by arranging for plenty of food and help, as well as an audiobook and print book that I had underway. It turned out that I was not able to read or listen to an audiobook for about a week. I am happy to be better at last and have finished the audiobook.

Although I will not be able to write as I would wish to about this book, now is the time for me to write about it. Jane’s mention of reading it with her book club moved me to listen to it. It has a firehose level of information that overwhelmed me from the outset. It is a memoir of the author and his father, a family history, an exposition of the political history of China, and more.

The author, as the New York Times correspondent for China from 2008 to 2016, draws extensively on his own experience of China, as well as his father’s. His father was in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded in 1941, but his family were middle class merchants on the mainland. When Mao took power, he joined the military and served far and wide in the country. We learn about his service in the freezing northeast during the Korean War to the time of suppression of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region in the far west. He experienced the famine caused by Mao but did leave the country before the Cultural Revolution began in earnest.

It was a good audiobook for me once I accepted that there was not a limited narrative I could take in and remember. It ranges from history of the distant past to an accounting of various family members to the chilling accumulation of power by Xi Jinping.

Edward Wong, At the Edge of Empire,  Viking, 2024, 464 pages (I listened to  the audiobook). Not available in the public library

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