FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, December 28

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

In Stock.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is included with a Kindle Unlimited membership. Learn more.

[{"displayPrice":"$26.99","priceAmount":26.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"26","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"PUFqdEs0GpcjqdjCRTzXRRYC4FiFB8HOAPI%2FYcJ3G45ygQ0NOdpM70zqH9u%2BLoHR0EmAMiZVgHDvST8WGLi%2B26IcQ9Iv32nuQJGsuq2mudAhpGr2DKNNraMEKxZUsNAcFSkJQ1lWF3Y%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$12.95","priceAmount":12.95,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"H63OJrq1%2F5woGRGLkzj6CsR7LcVBQgi4cjLdIAEY%2FHCd2MAeMd9XmbXf4EoMRyks5bUUkA52PUlXxW20Eukcz%2FqrPppQHWACkkfDDmGKiALBynyrZlHSvZhqQGm%2B4i6aGueHrybgf%2BKN2XXxQROPg3MpJ6vhx5bKBVex6pMeeYQ%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$26.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2023

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery December 28 - 30 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by First Morning Books

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$20.32
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: SuperBookDeals--

Added

Not added

$22.99
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: BunkoBooks

Added

Not added

$28.35
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: PGGEN Books

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Follow the Author

Jasper Becker

Hungry Ghosts (Holt Paperback) Paperback – April 15, 1998

by Jasper Becker (Author)

99 ratings

4.0 on Goodreads

559 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$4.99

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$30.00

$17.25

$3.49

Paperback

"Please retry"

$26.99

$20.00

$1.95

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 3 million more titles $4.99 to buy
Hardcover
$30.00

22 Used from $3.49 7 New from $17.25 3 Collectible from $14.99
Paperback
$26.99

45 Used from $1.95 20 New from $20.00

Enhance your purchase

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chinese people suffered what may have been the worst famine in history. Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Ze-dong's "Great Leap Forward," an attempt at utopian engineering gone horribly wrong.

Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full account of this dark chapter in Chinese history. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. With China's reclamation of Hong Kong now a fait accompli, removing the historical blinders is more timely than ever. As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Becker's remarkable book...strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place."

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 15, 1998
Dimensions

6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0805056688
ISBN-13

978-0805056686
See all details

Frequently bought together

+
+

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Choose items to buy together.

by Jasper Becker Paperback
$26.99
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
by Frank Dikötter Paperback
$15.99
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Wednesday, Dec 28
by Anne Applebaum Paperback
$12.99
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Friday, Dec 23

Frank Dikötter
635
Paperback
22 offers from $11.95
Yang Jisheng
363
Paperback
35 offers from $6.49
Robert Conquest
187
Paperback
32 offers from $7.49
Zhi-Sui Li
289
Hardcover
108 offers from $2.30
Anne Applebaum
1,426
Paperback
in General Belarus & Ukraine Travel Guides
48 offers from $8.00
Jung Chang
4,144
Paperback
265 offers from $1.49

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An accessible, masterly account of the greatest peacetime disaster of this century.” ―The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Jasper Becker is currently Beijing bureau chief for the South China Morning Post. He has also written extensively on Chinese affairs for The Guardian, The Economist, and The Spectator. He lives in Beijing.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Griffin; Reprint edition (April 15, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805056688
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805056686
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #589,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #706 in Chinese History (Books)
- #11,886 in World History (Books)
- #22,772 in Social Sciences (Books)

Customer Reviews:
99 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jasper Becker

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Jasper Becker is a British journalist who spent 30 years covering Asia including 18 years living in Beijing. His reporting on uprisings, refugees and famine in China, Tibet and North Korea garnered him many awards and he is a popular speaker and commentator on current events in Asia. He now lives in England and has just released Made in China - Wuhan, Covid and the Quest for Biotech Supremacy published by Hurst Publishing. Earlier books such as Travels in an Untamed Land, Hungry Ghosts or Rogue Regime had described the devastating impact of Communism on the peoples of Mongolia, China and North Korea. In City of Heavenly Tranquillity, he laments the destruction of old Peking and the building of the new Beijing while The Chinese and Dragon Rising set out to portray the different sides of contemporary China. In Hungry Ghosts, the author had exposed for the first time the true madness and horrors of Mao’s secret famine during the Great Leap Forward. He has also researched family histories of the early Shanghai capitalists who became textile magnates in Hong Kong. Under the penname Jack MacLean, he has published an engrossing thriller set amid the drone wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan called Global Predator. Four of his earlier books on Asia have just been updated and re-released as kindle books.

Customer reviews

5 star		62%
4 star		27%
3 star		6%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

John H Funk

Ignorance is Bliss

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 15, 2017

Verified Purchase

Here is a story never taught in school, and certainly unknown to the general public. Who knew that while I and my friends were leaning to drive, eating pizza and cheese steaks, watching American Bandstand, going to school, complaining about what we wanted and didn't have - - millions were suffering beyond anything we could imagine? Starving, living in constant fear, eating their dead, selling their own children to be eaten, eating excrement, letting grain rot to avoid embarrassment to the government, all the fantastic lies just to avoid offending one man and dying by the thousands in every village. Worse than our most terrible visions of a traditional Hell, trivializing even the worst aspects of the Great Depression in the U.S. Reading this challenges normal beliefs about humanity. The Holocaust in Europe during WW II has been described as the most significant and terrible happening of 20th century history. But is that so? Based on Becker's quoted estimates, there were possibly more deaths attributable to the Great Famine than to the entire War. Is that the measure of a terrible happening?

Given today's political context, it is doubtful than anything will be learned - by the public - about this fairly recent history without a reading of this book and reference materials used to put it together. I feel that I have learned something that most people know nothing about. Mao and his mentor Stalin certainly rival Hitler in just plain nastiness.

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jody Gatwood

The greatest famine in history which Marxists still ignore.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is an extremely well documented history of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961) which starved to death between 30 million and 60 million Chinese people. They were sacrificed on the altar of Marxist-Leninist ideology, specifically through the forced collectivization of 500 million peasants. It’s astonishing how the news of the famine was suppressed in China, and decades later in the West. If your teacher or professor starts quoting the “great thoughts” of Mao Zedong, this book can help you recover your sanity and begin to learn the true depth of Mao’s evil, which millions of people deny even today.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Grandma Barbara

Unbelievable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

I will say that this is not an easy book to read, it is fascinating but has a lot of very dry political rhetoric. The story is horrifying and unbelievable, especially when looked at in the time frame involved. This was a time when most of the world was advancing and moving into the future and yet you see China rolling back to the middle ages. This shows what can happen to a country when it is ruled by such a tyrant. The Chinese people had no hope and it makes you wonder how much hope the rural people have to this day. It is hard for a democratic people to believe the horrors suffered by the Chinese peasants. I would have given the book five stars but it was kind of slow to plow through. It was certainly an education on suffering and trying to live through a horrible time. Maybe some day there will be leadership in China that really cares about the future of their people.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

M.B.

Excellent scholarship

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 16, 2011

Verified Purchase

This book looks at the disastrous policies of the Chinese Communist Party and how those policies led to famine in the late '50s and early '60s. Jasper's writing, while dry and uninteresting, is an example of excellent scholarship. He used countless sources, including many internal CCP documents, interviews, and plenty of statistical analysis. Mixed with the scholarship are several in-depth narratives that look at specific counties and provinces in China.

Becker's book is one of the first to detail the disastrous Great Leap Forward, Yang Jisheng's "Tombstone" and then Frank Dikötter's "Mao's Great Famine." The English translation of "Tombstone" removes about half of the original book's contents. "Mao's Great Famine" is somewhat more myopic than "Hungry Ghosts," providing little geography context for the hundreds of anecdotes Dikötter presents.

The scholarly debate between these books seems focused on the number of deaths. Taken together, the three books point to a death toll between 30,000,000 and 45,000,000 - an unfathomable tragedy. All three books correctly point out the disgusting human fault of the famine. Jasper's book, while dryer, does an excellent job of examining local and national faults.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Angi

Holy s...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 6, 2014

Verified Purchase

What lead me to this book was a work of fiction, dreams of joy by Lisa See. The things that she referred to seemed so unbelievable. When I looked up what she used for references, this book was used. I found this book to be amazing. The information provided kept me wanting more. While Dreams of Joy was a narrative, it was only from the perspective of the peasants in China/Chinese in the US.This book gives the reader incite into the people behind the decision that lead to the events in the other book. The writer gives so much information. It was just fuel to the fire! READ THIS BOOK!!!! :0)

Helpful

Dianna Reeves

An eye-opening and thorough look at China under Mao 's rule

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 7, 2014

Verified Purchase

I had read books that hinted at the atrocities committed during China's great famine but was astonished and at times disgusted with the facts presented in this book. I am amazed at the amount of research done and indeed required for a book of this nature. The author has taken an amazing amount of information and presented it in a surprisingly easy to read text. It is historical, but the author explains who the individuals are, where they stand politically, and how they fit in the picture. As for the experience of the peasants, the author spares no detail. I continue to be amazed and sickened that these things happened in the recent past. Every person's eyes need to be opened about this tragedy. This book will tell you the full story.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Ballet Fan

It is amazing that the Chinese Communist Party largely succeeded in sweeping ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

It is amazing that the Chinese Communist Party largely succeeded in sweeping knowledge of this event under the rug, even in the West. Will there ever be a Holocaust Museum in Beijing to commemorate the 30-40 million peasants who died of starvation in Mao's insane man-made famine? Probably not, as long as the CCP continues to control the official historical narrative in the Chinese press. However, the Party's conspicuous silence is proof of its complicity in a terrible crime against humanity.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 17, 2018

Verified Purchase

Really helpful for studying The Great Famine.

One person found this helpful

Jean-Loup

A must read

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on March 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

Excellent book. The sheer stupidity of the decisions made by the chinese leadership at the time is mind bogling. It was a world of lies, hypocrisy and evil.
I have read many books about WWII concentration camps, but some of what is described here is worse, and I had personaly never even heard of these famines. A must read.

Kindle Customer

Was recommended by a relative

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 23, 2016

Verified Purchase

Have actually not read yet. Was recommended by a relative.

See all reviews

Buy new: $26.99$26.99 FREE delivery: Wednesday, Dec 28 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used: $12.95

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Hungry Ghosts (Holt Paperback) Paperback – April 15, 1998

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Jasper Becker

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$26.99

FREE delivery: Wednesday, Dec 28

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$12.95