Praise for the first edition:
"... in the great tradition of Orwell and Solzhenitsyn; its true subject is the survival—and sometimes the defeat—of the human spirit in its lonely quest for integrity." —Time
"The almost childlike directness of Chen's tales... is captured in the very lightly revised translations of this new edition... Highly recommended." —Choice
A classic of modern world literature, this collection of stories provides a vivid and poignant eyewitness view of everyday life in China during the Cultural Revolution. For this edition, Howard Goldblatt has thoroughly revised the text and updated it to Pinyin romanization. In a new introduction, Perry Link reflects on the book’s significance in the post-Tiananmen era. Twenty-five years after its first publication, The Execution of Mayor Yin has lost none of its power to move the reader, and remains unmatched as a document of the period.