Rana Mitter's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2026)

1

Life and Death in Shanghai

Cheng Nien

4.5

A first-hand account of China's cultural revolution.

A first-hand account of China's cultural revolution. Nien Cheng, an anglophile and fluent English-speaker who worked for Shell in Shanghai under Mao, was put under house arrest by Red Guards in 1966 and subsequently jailed. All attempts to make her confess to the charges of being a British spy failed; all efforts to indoctrinate her were met by a

Recommended by Gunhee Park and Rana Mitter.

Rana Mitter

I think it’s right that Graham Peck was disappointed by the Cultural Revolution. This, of course, was essentially a revolt by Mao against his own party. Mao on one level fears that he is being sidelined by his own party, and on another level feels that the revolution had lost steam 17 years in. A new generation had been born that didn’t remember the struggles of 1949 and it was time to revitalise them and get them on the streets, to feel what a real revolution was like. That was Mao’s intention, and the results – from what we know – pleased him greatly, but they were much more explosive and wide-ranging than perhaps even he would have imagined, with terrible consequences for a very wide variety of people. [source]

Gunhee Park

I can’t narrow down one favorite book, but there are a few that have had a strong impact on me over the past few years. Life and Death in Shanghai and Man’s Search for Meaning are great non-business books that have helped me gain a deeper perspective on life. Both books also helps you gain a stronger appreciation of the times we live in today. [source]

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2

The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun

Lu Xun, Julia Lovell, Yiyun Li

4.1

Lu Xun (1881—1936) is one of the founding figures of modern Chinese literature. His celebrated short stories assemble a powerfully unsettling portrait of the superstition, poverty, and complacence that he perceived in late-imperial China, and in the revolutionary Republic that toppled the last dynasty in 1911. This volume presents Lu Xun's complete fiction, including 'The Real Story of Ah-Q,' 'Dia

Recommended by Ma Jian and Rana Mitter.

Rana Mitter

Lu Xun should be known to a wide range of readers overseas for two reasons. One – in a sense the more boring reason – is that he is politically very important. He’s always been brought up by the Communist Party as being the single most important writer of the 20th century in China. That’s partly because his message is about how China needed to radically reject its past associated with the Confucian system of ethics that underpinned the old empires, and instead embrace something more new and radical. You can see how that appealed to people involved in the Communist project. [source]

Ma Jian

This story is very famous, and also very short. Lu Xun didn’t write much in his life, and wrote both journalism and essays in newspapers, and literature. He was very outspoken in both. If a writer loses his criticism of society, I think that he is afraid to write about the truth. From reading Lu Xun, we can discover how authors must maintain a critical perspective. [source]

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3

Two Kinds of Time

Graham Peck, Robert Kapp

4.5

Graham Peck (1914-1968) made his first trip to China in 1935 and served with the U.S. Office of War Information in China throughout the 1940s. His memoir, Two Kinds of Time, first published in 1950, is witty and eloquent in both its words and the drawings with which it is lovingly illustrated. Long out of print in its unabridged version, this engagingly written eye-witness narrative of China on th

Recommended by Rana Mitter.

Rana Mitter

Two Kinds of Time is the only one of the five books I’ve chosen that’s not actually by a Chinese, but I’ve chosen it because it seems to me, of the fairly wide range of things you can read about World War Two in China, to be the single most evocative. It’s quite a long book but it actually goes by quite fast. One doesn’t have to make too much of an effort because the prose is so good. Of the many people who came to China in the 20th century and wrote about it, Peck remains one of the most fluid and sensitive. [source]

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4

Deathsong of the River: A Reader's Guide to the Chinese TV Series "heshang"

Xiaokang Su, Luxiang Wang, Richard W. Bodman, Pin P. Wan

4.5

Perhaps the most daring TV documentary series ever produced in mainland China, which directly affected the thinking of Chinese youth on the eve of the 1989 democracy movement. This richly-annotated translation of the original filmscript by Su Xiaokang and Wang Luxiang puts the series in its intellectual and artistic context and is suitable for use in classes on Chinese culture and contemporary Chi

Recommended by Rana Mitter.

Rana Mitter

It’s basically the script for what – with a bit but perhaps not too much exaggeration – one might say was the most important television programme that has ever been broadcast in China, and maybe one of the three or four most important in the world. If you think about programmes that really made an impact on society, such as Cathy Come Home in Britain in the sixties or Roots in the States in the eighties – River Elegy is all of that but more. [source]

5

The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity

Wang Hui, Rebecca Karl

4.4

Challenging both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm, China’s leading critic shatters the myth of progress and reflects upon the inheritance of a revolutionary past. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the roots of China’s social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the current state of mass depolitic

Recommended by Rana Mitter.

Rana Mitter

Wang Hui is one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals at the moment, in terms of his international exposure. I think the book is interesting because it gives his very ambiguous – or ambivalent from his point of view – take on what’s happening in China today. [source]