Before Mao: The Untold Story of Li Lisan and the Creation of Communist China

Patrick Lescot

ISBN 10: 0060084642 / ISBN 13: 9780060084646

Edité par Ecco, 2004

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. N° de réf. du vendeur G0060084642I4N10

Synopsis :

Combining an exceptional love story with a gripping tale of incarceration in Stalin's gulag and later in Mao Tse-tung's concentration camps, Patrick Lescot's Before Mao is a deeply moving, beautifully told saga of Li Lisan, Mao's predecessor at the head of the Communist Party and a key member of the Russian and Chinese revolutions.

Told in an engaging, highly dramatic style that reads more like a novel than a standard history, Lescot skillfully unfolds this page-turning biography. Li, who led the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s, was a rare survivor among the Chinese members of the International. He was eventually allowed to return to China after having been elected, in absentia, to Mao's government.

When Mao and Khrushchev fell out of power after 1959, the Chinese Communist Party demanded that Li divorce his wife, Lisa. When the couple refused to do so, Lisa was only allowed to stay by becoming a Chinese citizen. Soon after, both would be victims of the Cultural Revolution. Lisa was taken from her husband shortly before he was again arrested, imprisoned, and tortured -- this time fatally. She spent eight years in solitary confinement.

Moving from China to France to the Soviet Union and finally back to China, Before Mao is an extraordinary chronicle of the indomitable human spirit, "allowing us to share in some true moments of emotion, where love wins over totalitarianism's destruction of individuality" (Le Monde).

À propos de l'auteur:

Born in Tunisia in 1953, Patrick Lescot is the editor-in-chief of the foreign news service Agence France-Presse. He has been a correspondent in Johannesburg, Beijing, Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Bangkok, and Phnom Penh. Lescot studied Chinese history and language, philosophy, and journalism and spent several years in China, where he reported on Tibet's uprising in Lhasa and the Tiananmen Square events. He lives in Paris.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Before Mao: The Untold Story of Li Lisan and...
Éditeur : Ecco
Date d'édition : 2004
Reliure : Hardcover
Etat : Very Good
Etat de la jaquette : No Jacket