Motivational Speakers | After Dinner Speakers | Keynote Speakers | JLA Speaker Bureau - JLA

BIOGRAPHY

Print

The publication of Jung Chang's novel, Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China, was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well over two million, it was received with unanimous critical acclaim and won numerous awards. Now, more than fifteen years later, sales have topped ten million and it has been translated into thirty languages.

Few books have has such an impact on their readers. Through the story of three generations of women, Wild Swans paints a canvas, on an epic scale, of China's tragic twentieth century; astonishing, terrifying and deeply moving.

Born in Sichuan Province, less than three years after the establishment of The People's Republic, Jung Chang was a Red Guard at the age of fourteen and worked as a peasant, a steelworker and an electrician before studying English and later lecturing at Sichuan University.

Moving to Britain to pursue an academic life, she gained a PhD in Linguistics at York University. She received honorary doctorates from Buckingham, York and Warwick, then retired to concentrate on her writing.

Jung Chang has co-written (with her husband) just one book since Wild Swans; but the hefty (830 page) volume took twelve years to research. Mao: The Unknown Story met with widespread critical acclaim and was described by one critic as 'a triumph. The first intimate, political biography of the greatest monster of them all'.

Jung Chang has travelled the world, speaking about the tumultuous changes that overtook Chinese society. Her spellbinding presentations are particularly relevant with the recent emergence of China as a powerful trading nation and Olympic host. Among her topics is the challenge of globalisation and the lessons to be learnt from Mao Zedong.

© Copyright JLA: All Rights Reserved