Confessions
An Innocent Life in Communist China
5 August 2008
Description
"A mesmerizing read…A literary work of high distinction.” —William Grimes, New York Times
This “gripping and poignant memoir” (New York Times Book Review) draws us into the intersections of everyday life and Communist power from the first days of “Liberation” in 1949 through the post-Mao era. The son of a professional family, Kang Zhengguo is a free spirit, drawn to literature. In Mao’s China, these innocuous circumstances expose him at age twenty to a fierce struggle session, expulsion from university, and a four-year term of hard labor. So begins his long stay in the prison-camp system. He finally escapes the Chinese gulag by forfeiting his identity: at age twenty-eight he is adopted by an aging bachelor in a peasant village, which enables him to start a new life.
Reviews
"[A] remarkable memoir about growing up in Mao’s China…Mr. Kang serves as an extraordinary guide through an extraordinary period of Chinese history. He lives through the Great Leap forward, the Cultural Revolution, the thaw following Mao’s death, the growing democracy movement of the 1980s and the crackdown after the protests at Tiananmen Square. Simply as a documentary record of daily life in China, Confessions is a rewarding read, but Mr. Kang, a gifted stylist (well served by his translator, Susan Wilf) has transmuted his struggles into a literary work of high distinction." — William Grimes, New York Times
"A rich, moving, and unique memoir. Through its honest and intimate language, it attains a kind of universality, vivid, painful, and entirely authentic." — Ha Jin, author of The Boat Rocker and Waiting
"A haunting, frightening, and ultimately inspiring story." — Kirkus Reviews
"Absorbing…Kang’s story is a lively, intricate account of communism’s panoptic police state…Kang’s rugged individualism takes his story beyond the usual narrative of persecution and hardship, making it an incisive, personal critique of a deeply conformist society." — Publishers Weekly
"The perspective is fresh, the writing fresher, and the analysis, which is built into the stories rather than added afterwards, is freshest of all." — Library Journal
