Mao's Great Famine Book Review

Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter is a detailed account of China's most devastating catastrophe. China was facing a turbulent phase between 1958 and 1962 and was gradually descending into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an initiative to overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment was a disaster and it ended with destruction of tens of millions of lives.

Frank Dikotter presents an astonishing, riveting and magnificently detailed book that chronicles an era in Chinese history, much speculated about, but never fully documented. Although access to Communist Party archives was denied to historians, a new law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally changed the way one could study the Maoist era. The author shows that contrary to the belief, the Great Leap Forward was a disastrous initiative and not one which would prove the supreme power of communism.

Dikotter demonstrates, for the first time that under this initiative, the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history with at least 45 million people worked, starved or beaten to death but also the greatest demolition of real estate and catastrophe for the natural environment. Consequently, up to a third of all housing turned to rubble and the land savaged, in the pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments.

Combining together the vicious machinations in the hall of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Frank Dikotter gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised. Mao's Great Famine recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

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