Faber snaps up Branigan's 'mesmerising' exploration of Mao's influence on China

Faber has landed Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution, a "mesmerising" exploration of the legacy of Mao’s rule on modern China by Guardian journalist Tania Branigan. 

Associate publisher Laura Hassan acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada and including audio, from Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. It is scheduled for publication in February 2023.

"More than 50 years after the turmoil began, the Cultural Revolution’s scar runs through the heart of Chinese society and through the souls of its citizens," the synopsis explains. "Stationed in Beijing for the Guardian, Tania Branigan came to realise that this brutal and turbulent decade continues to propel and shape China to this day. Yet official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists, for the most part, as an absence. 

"Red Memory explores the stories of those who are driven to confront the era, fearing or yearning its return. What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?"

Branigan is the Guardian’s foreign leader writer. Having spent seven years as the Guardian’s China correspondent, her writing has also appeared in the Washington Post and the Australian. Red Memory is her first book. 

"Years of covering news in China taught me that you can’t understand the country without looking to its past; to an era that holds lessons for us all today," she said. "These stories are not only about the turmoil of that time and place, but about what we do when the worst happens, and how we live with it afterwards. It’s an honour to be published by Faber, and wonderful to work with an editor of such thoughtfulness and acuity."

Hassan said: "I read this in one mesmerising sitting. It is an utterly accessible route into what can seem like a daunting subject. But 10 years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews have allowed Branigan to craft an exceptional and intensely moving book. Red Memory uncovers 40 years of silence through the rarely heard, intimate stories of individuals who lived through Mao’s decade of madness. At a time when history is fetishised, threatened or suppressed around the world, Red Memory will resonate with many, many readers."