William Collins, part of HarperCollins, has acquired the long-awaited sequel to Jung Chang’s globally acclaimed memoir Wild Swans. The book will be published in September. Publishing director Arabella Pike acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander Associates.
The publisher describes Chang’s original book as a work that defined a generation – the story of ‘three daughters of China’: Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution. The book opens with her grandmother’s birth – and foot binding – in 1909, through the Cultural Revolution, and finishes in 1978 when the Mao era officially ended. To date, 15 million copies have been sold globally outside mainland China where all her books are banned.
The publisher says: “Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit and isolated state to a world 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 in those years were rich and complex – especially so because all her books were (and are) banned. China is now at another watershed moment: Chairman Xi Jinping is seeking to turn the country back towards the old Maoist days and build a Communist state with capitalist features. This new Xi era is greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother.”
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 they 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.
Arabella Pike said, ‘Reading Wild Swans as a teenager taught me the power of non-fiction both to move and inform. We are so excited and proud to welcome Jung back to William Collins for Fly, Wild Swans – a book that has the same narrative power as its predecessor, charting recent Chinese history through the experiences of Jung and her mother. It more than delivers and I cannot wait to see it published this autumn.’
Jung Chang added: ‘Decades have passed since 1978, when Wild Swans ends. The lives of my mother and myself have remained dramatic in those years as momentous changes have continued to sweep China. Today, my mother, aged 93 and living in the country, is bedridden. I long to be with her but I am unable to. I feel the time has come to bring the stories of our lives, along with that of China, up to date.’
