Jonathan Mirsky

‘Livelihood Issues’

Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62

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Bloomsbury 420pp £25 order from our bookshop

In 1936 Mao Tse-Tung, then a cave-dwelling revolutionary, told Edgar Snow his life story. Snow recorded Mao’s self-serving autobiography in Red Star Over China, which for decades made the American’s name as the leading reporter in China.

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