PositiveThe Times (UK)Applebaum... cannot be accused of being a bad writer. In under 200 breathless pages, she makes out her case in an urgent, almost steamrolling prose ... Applebaum does an excellent job laying out the corrupting effects these autocracies have on western democracies ... But if the stories Applebaum tells are striking, she has a tougher time proving her broader thesis of an Autocracy Inc.
Tania Branigan
MixedThe Times (UK)A narrative account of the period that also doubles as a meditation on how suppressed memories and trauma can haunt a society that has never had a proper reckoning with the horrors of its past ... Branigan documents all this with her unsentimental, unforgiving narrative ... This is a beautifully written and thought-provoking book, and I would have had no hesitation in recommending it were it not for a series of gratuitous comparisons that made me doubt whether Branigan understood her subject at all ... Did she make these parochial comparisons because she wanted to write a book that would be compelling for people who wouldn’t normally pick up books on China? Or was it partly the modern writer’s obsessive quest for that elusive substance, \'contemporary relevance\'? On the outskirts of Beijing, whole families were buried alive by their neighbours. In Guanxi, officials ate the barbecued flesh of class enemies they had killed. You cannot compare the Cultural Revolution to the Tory government or the Brexit campaign or Trump with any decency, you really can’t.
