After Tania Branigan moved to Beijing in 2008 as China correspondent for the Guardian, she observed the scars left by the country’s decade-long Cultural Revolution, even though it was rarely talked about. Masterminded by Mao Zedong in 1966, its goal was to rid the country of dissenters, silence his political rivals and distract from his own often disastrous policies. The Maoist ideology led students to denounce their teachers, children to report their parents and neighbours to turn on neighbours. Millions were tortured or banished to rural farms and “re-education” camps, and up to 2 million people were killed.
In Red Memory, which has won the 2023 Cundill History prize, Branigan gathers the stories of those who lived through it; her interviewees include both victims of persecution and the perpetrators who took it on themselves to root out enemies of the state. She meets a lawyer and former teenage Red Guard who reported his mother for privately denouncing Mao, in the process condemning her to death, and the daughter of a Communist party official who joined in the beating of her school vice principal, based on the latter’s assertion that, while fleeing the school in an emergency, students shouldn’t rescue the portraits of Mao from their classrooms.
As the narrator, Branigan reads as she writes: thoughtfully and with commendable directness. Moving between past and present, her book – which is shortlisted for this year’s Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction, the winner of which is announced on 16 November – provides a meticulous and insightful account of a dark chapter in China’s past and the ripple effects of violence and betrayal.
Further listening
Be Useful
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penguin Audio, 6hr 19min
The bodybuilder-turned-actor and politician looks back on his achievements and shares his seven rules for a rich and successful life.
Carrie Soto Is Back
Taylor Reid Jenkins, Penguin Audio, 10hr 30min
An ensemble cast reads this entertaining novel by the Daisy Jones author about a retired tennis champion coming out of retirement in an attempt to beat her world record.
