Jung Chang is an award-winning Chinese-born British author. She is the author of the bestselling book “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China,” a history of her family, and of the biography “Mao: The Unknown Story.” Both books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have been banned by the Chinese government. During the Cultural Revolution, Chang worked as a peasant farmer, a “barefoot doctor” in rural China, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming a student of English at Sichuan University. Chang left China for the U.K. in 1978, and earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of York in 1982, becoming the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university. Chang is the winner of numerous awards, including the U.K. Writers’ Guild Best Non-Fiction and Book of the Year U.K. Her first book, “Wild Swans,” was adapted for the stage and performed by London’s Young Vic company in 2012. In 2013, she published “Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China.” Chang has received honorary doctorates from the University of Buckingham, York, and Warwick, the Open University, and Bowdoin College.
