Red Memory

Winner of the Cundill History Prize
Shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction
Shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of 2023 • One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2023

"Masterful and crystalline. It feels as if Joan Didion turned her powers of observation on China." —Evan Osnos, National Book Award–winning author of Age of Ambition

An indelible exploration of the invisible scar that runs through the heart of Chinese society and the souls of its citizens.

“It is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution,” Tania Branigan writes. During this decade of Maoist fanaticism between 1966 and 1976, children turned on parents, students condemned teachers, and as many as two million people died for their supposed political sins, while tens of millions were hounded, ostracized, and imprisoned. Yet in China this brutal and turbulent period exists, for the most part, as an absence; official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia.

Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the madness. Deftly exploring how this era defined a generation and continues to impact China today, Branigan asks: What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited, or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?