China’s recent history had a fair share of man-made disasters, including the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. The few years after the 1949 revolution have always been considered to be a golden period. Wrong, says Frank Dikotter in a recent book, The Tragedy of Liberation. Author Zhang Lijia disagrees with him at the BBC.Read More →

Celebrity author Paul French flew out in person from Shanghai to receive in New York the prestigious Edgar Best Fact Crime award for his book “Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China. Report from CSmonitor.Read More →

“A chronicler of China’s seedy past,” author Paul French is called in a raving review in The Atlantic. His latest book “Midnight in Peking” became a candidate for the Edgar Award in the “Best Fact Crime” category.Read More →

Critics, including Fang Zhouzi, have taken apart the book Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by the US CEO Fu Ping. Her ‘rags to rich’ story contained too many unbelievable stories. Fellow author Zhang Lijia went through the book, and on her weblog she sides with the critics. “Too many holes to make it believable.”Read More →