Description

Winner of the Baifang Schell Book Prize 2025 Orwell Prize Finalist

One of The Washington Posts 50 Notable Nonfiction Books of 2024

A sprawling, complex morality tale, sweeping us along. The Wall Street Journal

In telling this personal story about family memory, exile and return, the book also takes in the breadth of [Chinas] evolution during the 20th century. The Washington Post

This books power comes from Wongs broad sense of the patterns of Chinese history, reflected in the lives of a father and son, and from his ability to toggle effortlessly between the epic and the intimate. Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic

Edward Wongs exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of Americas finest reporters on China could deliver. In tracing his fathers journeyfrom Hong Kong to Xinjiang to AmericaWong gives us a profound story of modern China itself. Anyone who once was absorbed by the power of Wild Swans will savor this meditation on memory, history, and belonging. Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book Award

One of Foreign Policys Most Anticipated Books of 2024

An epic story of modern China that weaves a riveting family memoir with vital reporting by the New York Times diplomatic correspondent

The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the Peoples Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Maos promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he made plans for a desperate escape to Hong Kong.

When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his fathers mysterious past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nations astounding economic boom and global expansionand grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. Following in his fathers footsteps, he witnessed ethnic struggles in Xinjiang and Tibet and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. And he had an insiders view of the worlds two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads.

Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans decades of momentous change and gives profound insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. A groundbreaking book, At the Edge of Empire is the essential work for understanding China today.

Author: Edward Wong
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking
Published: 06/25/2024
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.49lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.32w x 1.51d
ISBN: 9781984877406
Language: English