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Author’s biography:

Zhang Rong, the world-renowned author of “The Rainbow: The Story of Three Generations of Chinese Women” (1991), “Mao Zedong: A Hard-Known Story” (with her husband Qiao. Harry Dai co-authored (2005), Cixi: Enlightening the Empress Dowager of Modern China (2013), and The Three Song Sisters and Their Husbands (2019). The first part is Zhang Rong’s family history, and the last three are his trilogy of modern Chinese history and its core figures. The books were published in more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies outside mainland China, receiving extremely high praise from readers. The Red is one of the best-selling books in the non-fiction genre in British publishing history, and is on the readers’ list of the best books of the twentieth century. The American magazine Time commented on “Mao’s biography” and said: “The power of this book is like an atomic bullet.” The New York Times called the “Biography of Cixi” the first authoritative work on Cixi to make full use of Chinese and English historical sources. The Three Soong Sisters were hailed as “an immortal masterpiece” by the British political weekly The Spectator.

Zhang Rong was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province in 1952 and worked as a farmer, sand turner and electrician during the Cultural Revolution. In 1973, he studied at the Department of Foreign Languages of Sichuan University. He studied in the UK in 1978, joined York University in 1979 to study linguistics, and received a Ph.D. in 1982, making him the first Chinese mainland to receive a Ph.D. degree in the UK since the Communist Party of China took power. He has taught at the School of Asian and African Studies at the University of London and is an Honorary Fellow of the College.

In 2024, Zhang Rong was awarded the Commander’s Medal of the British Empire by the King of the United Kingdom in recognition of her “contributions to literature and history”. CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to literature and to history.