The essential history of modern China, told through the story of one family

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 'A brilliant personal account of China's borderlands and peoples' Francis Fukuyama 'Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find' Barbara Demick In 1962, Edward Wong's father, disillusioned with Communism, fled China for Hong Kong and later the USA. From then on, he rarely spoke of his homeland, or his years crisscrossing the country in Mao's People's Liberation Army. Much later, Edward became Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, and was drawn into investigating his father's past even as he assessed a resurgent China under Xi Jinping. Witnessing civil rights struggles in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, Wong reached a deeper understanding of his family and the nation. This chronicle of nearly a century of momentous change reveals China as it catapulted into the superpower age.

"Arresting ... a family history that exposes China's authoritarian regime and an era of repression" - Financial Times

"A touching family memoir... about an immigrant's yearning to understand his heritage and his family" - The Spectator

"A sprawling, complex morality tale, sweeping us along." - Wall Street Journal

"Finely crafted ... At the Edge of Empire is valuable both on a political and personal level, and opens up the complexities of Chinese politics and Chinese life in a way that general readers will find fascinating ... deeply satisfying" - Guardian

"Astonishing ... A humane, moving story against a massive canvas of China's rise to power" - China’s Good War

"Utterly gripping and original ... an unforgettable account of the country's recent past and present" - Maoism: A Global History

"This sparkling book ... tells a story of greater China that is both intimately personal and fundamentally global, a journey steeped in trauma, nostalgia, and even poetry that only [Wong's] reporting talents could conjure" - Washington Post

"In the age of the instant expert, Edward Wong is the real thing ... [A] blend of epic family memoir and deeply insightful reporting on the rise of an increasingly autocratic China under Xi Jinping" - The Retreat of Western Liberalism

"A fascinating read ... a beautifully-written personal account of China's rise to a superpower ... vividly told" - Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants

"Edward Wong's exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America's finest reporters on China could deliver ... A profound story of modern China itself" - Age of Ambition

"Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find ... [Brings] it all vividly to life in a way no other book on China has for me" - Eat the Buddha and Nothing to Envy

"A seamless and engaging hybrid narrative that reminds us it's people who write history" - My Old Home

"It is rare for a book to combine past and present, personal history and the history of a vast nation with such thoughtfulness, grace, and panache" - Our Country Friends

"A true epic and an extraordinary work of reportage. The son of two empires, Edward Wong is admirably clear-eyed in his ability to weave the personal and intimate with the monumental" - Land of Big Numbers

"A masterpiece ... a must-read for anyone with the faintest interest in China, America's relationship with China, and the whole question of empire in the contemporary world" - Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China

"An absorbing new memoir [which] explores the country through a triple prism of history, geography and ancestry... stories are beautifully told and expose the contradictions of modern China" - The Economist

"This book's power comes from Wong's broad sense of the patterns of Chinese history, reflected in the lives of a father and son, and from his ability to toggle effortlessly between the epic and the intimate" - The Atlantic

"In telling this personal story about family memory, exile and return, the book also takes in the breadth of [China's] evolution during the 20th century" - Washington Post