Jung Chang | Signed First Editions

About Jung Chang

Jung Chang is a Chinese-born British author whose blend of personal history, political insight and lyrical storytelling has made her one of the most influential voices in contemporary narrative nonfiction. Born in Yibin, Sichuan, in 1952, she grew up during the Cultural Revolution and was sent to the countryside as a peasant labourer before working as a barefoot doctor and later as an electrician. After the political climate shifted, she studied English and eventually left China in 1978 to pursue further education in Britain. She became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to earn a PhD from a British university, completing her doctorate at the University of York.

Chang achieved global recognition with Wild Swans, published in 1991, a sweeping family saga that traces the lives of three generations of women against the backdrop of China’s turbulent twentieth century. Part memoir, part history, and widely considered a landmark literary memoir, it sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide and won numerous awards, including the NCR Book Award and the British Book of the Year. Its impact extended far beyond the literary sphere, opening a rare personal window into the Cultural Revolution for millions of Western readers.

She continued to explore modern Chinese history through ambitious biographical works, beginning with Mao: The Unknown Story (2005), written with her husband, historian Jon Halliday. The book drew global attention for its exhaustive research and uncompromising portrayal of Mao Zedong. Although controversial, it cemented Chang’s reputation as a fearless chronicler of China’s political past. Her later works, including Empress Dowager Cixi (2013) and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister (2019), continued this trajectory, shedding new light on powerful women who shaped China’s path from empire to revolution.

In 2025, Chang returned to deeply personal territory with a new memoir – Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China – exploring her life between China and the West, reflecting on exile, identity and the long shadow of history. The book was widely anticipated by readers who have followed her work since Wild Swans, promising a rare continuation of the story that first brought her international acclaim.

Across her career, Jung Chang has received multiple literary honours and her books have been translated into more than forty languages, confirming her global reach. Her writing is marked by clarity, quiet emotional power and meticulous historical detail, qualities that appeal equally to literary readers, historians and collectors of modern nonfiction. Today she divides her time between research, public speaking and writing, continuing to illuminate the personal and political forces that defined twentieth-century China.