Liang Heng

Fascinating and fantasically well-written memoir of Liang Heng's life as a child and teenager in the Cultural Revolution. It could have desecnded into something quite awful but was deeply and powerfully written, tracing his own developing feelings from the early adoration of Mao and the Party to the growing disillusion. Really a great joy to read, despite how hard the life was.

One of the better Cultural Revolution books I have read, but perhaps because it was one of the first. After a while, the horror of it all can make you a bit numb. This one isn't nearly as harrowing as a few others however. Life and Death in Shanghai would have to be my first recommendation, as it is also extremely well written.

Extremely vivid first-person account of what it was like to be one of Mao's Red Guards, when the
Guards were attacking the writer's own family.