Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China [Paperback]

Kang Zhengguo (Author), Susan Wilf (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2008

“A mesmerizing read.... A literary work of high distinction.” —William Grimes, New York Times

This “gripping and poignant memoir” (New York Times Book Review) draws us into the intersections of everyday life and Communist power from the first days of “Liberation” in 1949 through the post-Mao era. The son of a professional family, Kang Zhengguo is a free spirit, drawn to literature. In Mao’s China, these innocuous circumstances expose him at age twenty to a fierce struggle session, expulsion from university, and a four-year term of hard labor. So begins his long stay in the prison-camp system. He finally escapes the Chinese gulag by forfeiting his identity: at age twenty-eight he is adopted by an aging bachelor in a peasant village, which enables him to start a new life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of this absorbing memoir was a misfit in the most misfit-intolerant place on earth. Coming of age during the Cultural Revolution, Kang kept secret diaries, disdained the political sloganeering at his university and was sent away for requesting the suspect novel Doctor Zhivago—crimes that landed him a three-year prison term and resettlement in a peasant commune where the work was almost as backbreaking as in the camps. His story is a lively, intricate account of communism's panoptic police state, suffocating bureaucracy (residency permits and ration cards made moving, working and eating impossibly complex) and rabid witch hunts for imaginary class villains, all of which only exacerbated traditional obsessions with obtaining food, housing and a spouse. But official denunciations of Kang's bad attitude weren't entirely wrong. "I treasured laziness," he writes. "I admired the work habits of carnivorous animals like lions... free to loll around all day once they had finished capturing their prey." Such profoundly unproletarian sentiments put him at odds not only with the Party but with his despairing parents and disgruntled villagers who felt he was shirking in the fields. Kang's rugged individualism takes his story beyond the usual narrative of persecution and hardship, making it an incisive, personal critique of a deeply conformist society. Photos. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Zhengguo has gained a reputation as a writer whose spirit and style were not crushed by the oppression of China's Mao years. His style is indeed vivid and fluid, running from social commentary and political analysis to inner musings and sharp observations of everyday life and the fortitude it takes to swim against an overpowering political and social tide. Zhengguo records life in China from the time of "liberation" in 1949 through the Tiananmen Square protests and later. As a student, his resistance to political oppression landed him in a brutal labor camp, where, upon release in 1965, he was presented with a bill. Zhengguo chronicles the petty use of power to control every aspect of life, such as applying for a job, a marriage license, a residence permit, or rations coupons, as well as the mindless cruelty of the prison camps. He explores the ways that the push to conformity and official notions of egalitarianism distort human interactions, and the anger and amazement of his family at his continued defiance. For readers interested in life in China under Mao as well as the literature that chronicles that period, this is a wonderful book. Bush, Vanessa --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393332004
• ISBN-13: 978-0393332001
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A salvation through writing, July 23, 2007

By 

Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Confessions: An Innnocent Life in Communist China (Hardcover)

Princeton professor Perry Link says in the Introduction that Confessions "may be the best account of daily life in Communist China that I have ever read. It stands out .. because of the extraordinary lifelike qualities of the writing and the credibility of its account .. Hundreds of writers .. have given accounts of China during Mao's years, but nearly all use an ideological lens .. This account, in contrast, is clear eyed."

As Link says, it is honest and devoid of Communist ideology, the first honest account "free of Mao" to appear out of China. The writing is superb and the characters pop out of the page. Certain scenes are anthropological in detail, such as rural peasant life, and some of the prison descriptions are, according to Link, as good as anything of its type available.

Zhengguo never sacrificed his internal integrity, which made him a nail-head that attracted the notice of the Communist hammer, usually involving literature and books: Zhengguo was jailed for three years for requesting a library copy of Doctor Zhivago. Zhengguo says the purpose in writing his memoirs: "I sought salvation through describing my trials and tribulations in writing. My purpose was not merely to complain but rather to salvage my dignity through honest revelations about myself and everyone who had interacted with me, whether friend or foe." Zhengguo has obvious faults, there are times the reader wonders how he could be so foolish and stubborn, but anyone who is a devotee of books and the literary life will find in Zhengguo inspiration for a dignified life and personal integrity.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, July 5, 2007

By 

Martin Guerre "book lover" (London, Ontario) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confessions: An Innnocent Life in Communist China (Hardcover)

Kang's Confessions share with Rousseau's a stunning honesty. And it is honesty that makes this autobiography so accessible to non Chinese readers, despite the alien world it describes. Kang, like Rousseau, proves that when a human being lays himself bare his voice will carry clearly across time and space.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Confessions' stands out, July 27, 2007

By 

A Pennsylvania reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confessions: An Innnocent Life in Communist China (Hardcover)

An excellent memoir of the madness that was China's Cultural Revolution. Well-written, in-depth and even-handed. The author's description of his imprisonment for "thought crimes" is chilling.