Birdless Summer by Han Suyin: 1968 1st Edition Hardback

Author: Han Suyin

Publisher: Jonathan Cape

Year published: 1968

Pagination: 347pp illustrations

Condition: Ex library with dewey number on spine and title page.

The events of Chinese history between 1938 and 1948 are vividly reconstructed in this third volume of Han Suyin's autobiography. The story of her unhappy marriage to a fanatical army officer is told against the background of the appalling confusion and corruption of China at that time: the Japanese invasion, the misery and squalor of the retreating Chinese, the activities of Chiang Kaishek and his 'Blueshirts', the violent prelude to revolution. Ill-treated and misunderstood, Han Suyin goes to work as a midwife in Chengtu, and it is there her career as a writer begins. Later, unable to have a child herself, she adopts a daughter. When her husband becomes military attache in London, Han Suyin follows him there and she describes in fascinating detail her life as a diplomat's wife in wartime. In 1944, she enrolls as a medical student and, after qualifying, she spends a year as house surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital. As the Chinese civil war turns into revolution, Han Suyin, now a widow, returns to Hong-Kong. Han Suyin's narrative is not merely the affecting and extraordinary life story of a woman of immense courage. In the way that if brings to life more powerfully than ever before the spirit and politics of China, it is a significant contribution to the history of our time.