Daughter of the River: A Memoir (reissued) - Softcover

Ying, Hong

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408803135 ISBN 13: 9781408803134

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2010

Synopsis

The autobiography of a young girl growing up in Mao's China. Hong Ying grew up in a slum on the banks of the Yangtze, an area permanently veiled in fog and steeped in superstition. Life was precarious and Hong Ying, the youngest of the six children, grew up afraid that she would be condemned to a life of carrying sand and emptying chamber pots. Gradually, Hong Ying began to try and solve some of the mysteries which had seemed to surround her early life: a stalker who had followed her since she was a child, a VD record in her father's file, and a persistent feeling that there was something strange about her birth. Among her discoveries, Hong Ying learnt that her mother was once married to a Triadman who had died in a labour camp as a counter-revolutionary, while her father, now a blind sailor, had several times barely escaped with his life during the civil war. Under the corrupt rule, her mother had taken extreme measures to keep the children alive while several of her relatives starved to death during the Great Famine. Moreover, Hong Ying's stalker turned out to have an astoundingly close connection with her. After the tragic deaths of both her first lover and her first child, Hong Ying decided she had to take control of her own life: she left home and worked hard to become a published poet and a novelist. After the events in Tian'anmen Square, she left China to live in London.

About this title

Review:

'A brilliant and sensitive writer I was very moved' Jung Chang

About the Author:

Hong Ying was born in Chongqing, China in 1962, towards the end of the Great Leap Forward during the Cultural Revolution. She began to write at eighteen, leaving home shortly afterwards to spend the next ten years moving around China, exploring her voice as a writer in poems and short stories. After periods of study at the Lu Xun Academy in Beijing and Shanghai's Fudan University, Hong Ying moved to London in 1991 where she established herself as an international writer. She returned to Beijing in 2000. Hong Ying is best known in English for the novels K: the Art of Love, Summer of Betrayal, Peacock Cries, and her autobiography Daughter of the River. She has been published in twenty-nine languages and has appeared on the bestseller lists of numerous countries. Many of her books have been or are now in the process of being turned into television series and films, for example, Lord of Shanghai. In her work, she likes to focus on human stories, hardship and history. Her responsibility as a writer, she believes, is in part to explore the lives of marginalised groups struggling for visibility - and compassion - in contemporary China.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1408803135
• ISBN 13: 9781408803134
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288