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In Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution, Tania Branigan undertakes the task of documenting one of China’s most turbulent and devastating periods, the Cultural Revolution. Relying on heartbreaking personal accounts from those who lived in the country during the 1960s and ’70s, the text is an excavation of the radical ideology that led to a movement defined by political and social chaos and violence. In writing this, Branigan bears witness to one of the darkest and most formative moments in Chinese history—a period defined by the massacre of many, the destruction of art and culture, and an air of fear that shaped the country as we know it today. —Cady Lang

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