The book of secrets A personal history of betrayal in Red China

Xinran, 1958-

Book - 2024

"The story of a family in modern China with a history of deceit, betrayal and political intrigue, and the communist party's long shadow over them, from the Cultural Revolution to today. Following the lives of military intelligence officer Jie and his wife Moon, The Book of Secrets weaves recently found material into a narrative that not only illuminates the shadowy world of intelligence in China, but also the emotional tragedies that political extremism inflicted on those working within. Drawing on Jie's own vivid biography of his youth, Xinran pieces together his trajectory as he joins the great hope of the Chinese young - the Communist Party - and becomes a loyal cadre until the late 1970s when, as a chief in the security f...orces, he makes a decision that will poison his family against him. This is a totally unique behind-the-scenes account of a family torn apart by the Tiananmen Square massacre and the attempts of Jie to finally open up the Chinese system to the people, pieced together from an extraordinary archive of personal diaries and letters" --

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951.056/Xinran
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2nd Floor New Shelf 951.056/Xinran (NEW SHELF) Due Jan 4, 2025
Subjects
Genres
Personal correspondence
Personal narratives
Biographies
Published
London : Bloomsbury Continuum 2024.
Language
English
Chinese
Main Author
Xinran, 1958- (author)
Other Authors
Will Spence (translator)
Item Description
Translated from the Chinese.
Includes index.
Physical Description
320 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781399406680
  • Foreword: Words on the night breeze
  • Snow's story
  • Xinran, December 2018
  • Part one: The tapes
  • 1. A family fragmented by the chaos of war
  • 2. Tsinghua, an awakening of love and faith
  • 3. Questions of career and faith
  • Note, Xinran
  • Part two: Jie's letters to his wife Moon
  • 4. 1951-4, Fantasy and romance
  • 5. 1954-7, Confusion and disruption
  • 6. 1957-66, Betrayal and adversity
  • 7. 1976-2009, Resurrection and death
  • 2010-17, The final messages
  • Afterword, Xinran.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

"You were born and raised in a household that couldn't provide you with any real answers, and lived in a society in which no one dared speak the truth," writes Chinese military intelligence officer Jie (1927--2017) in unsent letters to his daughter Snow. Semi-anonymized excerpts from this stash of letters and voice recordings, found by Snow after Jie's death, comprise the bulk of this enthralling exploration by journalist Xinran (The Good Women of China) of the life of a communist party acolyte in late 20th-century China. After joining the party as an idealistic university student in the 1940s, Jie rose quickly to a position of power in Beijing. In his letters, Jie strives to deconstruct his fraught relationship with the young cadet who would become his wife. The couple, unable to live together or raise their children (a grandmother stepped in) due to their party assignments, were constantly urged to report on each other. Their marriage unraveled as both struggled with the paranoid politics that had overtaken their government: "From the cage of our marriage we have watched the political chaos unfold outside while trying not to tear each other to pieces within." The surreal lyricism of a spymaster's secret diary coupled with the behind-the-scenes look at China's intelligence apparatus makes for addictive reading. Readers will be hooked. (Apr.)

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