Mao’s Last Dancer Li Cunxin on his long-awaited follow-up: ‘I don’t think my publisher expected it to take 14 years!’

Ballet dancer Li Cunxin’s new memoir, The Lucky Son, is the sequel to the internationally successful Mao’s Last Dancer. Photograph: David Kelly/The Guardian

Some people live such extraordinary lives that a single autobiography simply won’t suffice. Li Cunxin has now written two. The renowned ballet dancer and former artistic director of Queensland Ballet had hoped he was finished writing his story after the phenomenal international success of his 2003 memoir, Mao’s Last Dancer. But life had other plans.

“Actually, I had signed a contract with Penguin Random House for a follow-up,” Cunxin says, from his home in Brisbane. “It was going to be about the lives of my brothers and friends in China, and the ways the country has changed over time. But then I was offered the job at Queensland Ballet and I had to dedicate all my time to that. I don’t think they were expecting [the sequel] to take 14 years!”