#BookReview of #FlyWildSwans by Jung Chang

‘My Mother, Myself and China:
The hotly anticipated sequel to the multi-million copy international bestseller’

[ About Fly, Wild Swans ]

Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation, an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother – ‘three daughters of China’. The book opens in 1909 with her grandmother’s birth – and foot-binding – when China was under the last emperor, moving through Mao Zedong’s rule, especially the Cultural Revolution during which Jung’s parents were subjected to horrendous ordeals because of their courage. It finishes in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping officially ended the Mao era and started the ‘reforms’. Jung, at that propitious juncture, became one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China for the West.

Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit and isolated state to a global power, the challenger to the United States’ dominant position in the world. Through those decades, Jung’s life has been intimately entwined with her native land. Her experiences dealing with the regime in those years were rich and revealing – especially so because all her books were (and are) banned.

Fly, Wild Swans is the follow-up to Wild Swans and brings the story of Jung’s family – along with that of China – up to date. The book is in many ways Jung’s love letter to her mother. It is inevitably also about her grandmother and father, both of whom died tragically in the Cultural Revolution but are often recalled in this book. In fact, the past is never far away in Jung’s subsequent life. It has shaped her, and moulded the present China, and what’s more, it promises to herald the future.

China is now at another watershed moment with the era of Chairman Xi Jinping greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother. Fly, Wild Swans is Jung’s heartfelt response to that experience, and a book filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history – both personal and global. Ultimately uplifting, told in Jung’s clear, honest and compelling voice, it is memoir writing at its best.

[ My Review ]

Fly, Wild Swans is the sequel to the extraordinary experiences of Jung Chang, as recounted in Wild Swans, her sensational bestselling memoir. Published with William Collins on September 16th 2025, the Financial Times describes it as ‘a tribute to her uncrushable mother and a powerful portrait of censorship and shifting attitudes in Xi’s China’. You do not have to read Wild Swans first but I would recommend that you do invest the time in order to get the bigger picture of China’s history, a country that has seen so much unrest over the years.

I was blown away by the level of personal detail and the history of China in Wild Swans which I read and reviewed recently. Jung Chang, and her extended family, have witnessed so much pain and anguish over the decades. They have grieved for many, yet she fearlessly continues to document all their lives more than thirty years after the publication of her very successful memoir. Her mother, Xia De-hong, at ninety-four years of age, is unwell but, sadly, their only source of face-to-face communication is now via video. Married to Irish historian Jon Halliday and living in the UK, Chang has had to come to terms with the fact that she will never be able to return home again, with her mother also warning her against travelling to China and to live her life of freedom in the west.

Following on from the success of Wild Swans, in Fly, Wild Swans Chang writes about how her book was viewed in China and the impact it has had on her life since. She did have limited access to China in the intervening years after she left but has not returned since 2018. All her books are banned in China and, with the lack of political freedom and the intensity of the security checks that are now very prevalent, her fear of imprisonment is very real.

She writes about a China on the cusp of positive change post Mao Zedung, but with Chairman Xi Jinping now at the helm for an indeterminate period of time, Chang fears for her country, her relatives and her friends who remain there. Jung Chang’s enduring love for her mother is very evident and the pride she feels for all that belong to her pulses through her work. Her love for her country is also very much evident, as is the heartache she feels about its past, present and future.

With more fascinating insights, Fly, Wild Swans is another intense and momentous book written by a courageous individual unafraid to express her views. Educational, compelling and potent, Jung Chang’s ability to convey so much within the pages is quite remarkable.

[ Thank you to Harper Collins Ireland for a copy of Fly, Wild Swans in exchange for my honest review ]

[ Bio ]

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. She was briefly a Red Guard, and then a peasant, a ‘barefoot doctor’, a steelworker and an electrician.

She came to Britain in 1978, and became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university.

Her books include ‘Wild Swans’, which won the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year, and which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, except in China where it is banned, as are all of her other books. She lives in London.

Her latest book is, Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China (2025).

Read more: https://www.jungchang.net/biography