The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao And The Cultural Revolution
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
In one of the most searingly honest political critiques of the twentieth century, The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution strips away the propaganda and mythology surrounding Mao Zedong's most catastrophic experiment in social engineering, exposing the brutal reality hidden beneath the revolutionary rhetoric. Simon Leys — the pen name of Belgian sinologist Pierre Ryckmans — presents a forensic and damning account of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), arguing that what was packaged as a populist uprising against bourgeois corruption was, in truth, a calculated power struggle orchestrated by Mao to reassert his grip on the Chinese Communist Party. Written with the moral clarity of a scholar who refused to be seduced by the fashionable Maoism sweeping Western intellectuals at the time, Leys' work stands as a landmark of dissident sinology — precise, courageous, and prophetic. His prose is razor-sharp, combining rigorous historical analysis with an almost literary indignation at the suffering inflicted upon the Chinese people. First published in French in 1971, the book scandalized many in the West who had romanticised the revolution, and its vindication by subsequent history only burnishes its reputation further. For anyone seeking to understand how absolute power corrupts an ideology — and a nation — this remains an indispensable, unsettling testament.
Author: Simon Leys
Format: Hardback
Genre: Asian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
In one of the most searingly honest political critiques of the twentieth century, The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution strips away the propaganda and mythology surrounding Mao Zedong's most catastrophic experiment in social engineering, exposing the brutal reality hidden beneath the revolutionary rhetoric. Simon Leys — the pen name of Belgian sinologist Pierre Ryckmans — presents a forensic and damning account of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), arguing that what was packaged as a populist uprising against bourgeois corruption was, in truth, a calculated power struggle orchestrated by Mao to reassert his grip on the Chinese Communist Party. Written with the moral clarity of a scholar who refused to be seduced by the fashionable Maoism sweeping Western intellectuals at the time, Leys' work stands as a landmark of dissident sinology — precise, courageous, and prophetic. His prose is razor-sharp, combining rigorous historical analysis with an almost literary indignation at the suffering inflicted upon the Chinese people. First published in French in 1971, the book scandalized many in the West who had romanticised the revolution, and its vindication by subsequent history only burnishes its reputation further. For anyone seeking to understand how absolute power corrupts an ideology — and a nation — this remains an indispensable, unsettling testament.