Red Azalea by Anchee Min (Gollancz $288) THE issue of love and sex in the Cultural Revolution, a time when Chairman Mao and his wife Jiang Qing were trying to divert all human passion to their revolutionary cause, is boldly tackled in this book by a former Little Red Guard and Shanghai actress.
Of all the works on the Cultural Revolution so far, including Jung Chang's best-selling Wild Swans , Anchee Min's is the most personal. No other focuses so extensively on the course of relationships and individual passion in those years.
There is no doubt that the drama of Ms Min's life and loves makes for a good and sometimes shocking read. But it is also refreshing that Ms Min, who managed to leave China for the United States in 1984, has cut through traditional Chinese prudery to explain how she survived the no-sex regime that the Maos imposed on the country's young people.
Ms Min was too young to have taken part in the Cultural Revolution when it was at its most fervent - she was only nine when it broke out in 1966. But her experience in its last two years, when disillusion was well set in among the movement's initial supporters, makes for a dramatic story worth telling.
In 1974, when she was 17, Ms Min was assigned to life as a peasant alongside thousands of other Shanghainese. She was sent to Red Fire Farm, located near the shore area of the East China Sea, where 13,000 toiled to make crops grow.
The city girls lived and worked in the most basic conditions. By day they slaved over land so barren it could only grow cotton fit for paper. At night they returned to their military-style camp, incessant political study sessions and cramped dormitories.