Maoism

Julia Lovell is Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Her two most recent books are The Great Wall and The Opium War (which won the 2012 Jan Michalski Prize). Her many translations of modern Chinese fiction into English include Lu Xun's The Real Story of Ah Q, and other Tales of China (2009). She is currently completing a new translation of Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en.

She writes about China for several newspapers, including the Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

WINNER OF THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2019
SHORLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2019

'A landmark work giving a global panorama of Mao's ideology filled with historic events and enlivened by striking characters' Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of China

'Wonderful' Andrew Marr, New Statesman

Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao's revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People's Republic. With disagreements between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.

A crucial motor of the Cold War: Maoism shaped the course of the Vietnam War and brought to power the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; it aided anti-colonial resistance movements in Africa; it inspired terrorism in Germany and Italy, and wars and insurgencies in Peru, India and Nepal, some of which are still with us today.

Starting with the birth of Mao's revolution in northwest China in the 1930s and concluding with its violent afterlives in South Asia and resurgence in the People's Republic today, Julia Lovell re-evaluates Maoism as both a Chinese and an international force, linking its evolution in China with its global legacy.

Revelatory and instructive… [a] beautifully written and accessible bookThere is not a dull sentence in this scintillating and wry account of the global impact of MaoismWonderfulAn exciting, alternative history of the 20th century that deviates from the well-rehearsed narrative that relays between Washington and MoscowA landmark work giving a global panorama of Mao's ideology filled with historic events and enlivened by striking charactersJulia Lovell has given us a masterful corrective to the greatest misconception about today’s China. For too long, visitors who marveled at China’s new luxuries and capitalist zeal assumed that Maoism had gone the way of its creator. That was a mistake. Lovell’s account - eloquent, engrossing, intelligent - not only explains why Xi Jinping has revived some of Mao’s techniques, but also why Mao's playbook for the “People’s War” retains an intoxicating and tragic appeal to marginalized people the world overLovell takes us on an exhilarating journey, tracing the spread of Maoist theories across South-east Asia and then Africa, ending up in today’s China… The historical sweep of this book is impressiveLovell has produced a work which may well be the most harrowing, fascinating and occasionally hilarious book on the subject thus farLovell is an accomplished storyteller with a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of China’s relationship with itself and the worldLovell has a gift for compressing long and convoluted histories via just the right stories, characters, moments, and statistics… In vivid, often grim detail, Lovell shows us how and why Maoism has proven better, both inside and outside China, at attacking state infrastructure than building it upLovell breaks new ground and does so in a wonderfully well-written account packed with horrors, extraordinary characters and occasionally macabre humourLovells’s descriptions of…global strands of Maoism are well-researched and colourfulHighly readable and well-researched book… timelyA fascinating account of the influence of Maoism, during the cold war and beyond[A] superb and chilling studyA fascinating and timely work on one of the most influential and disruptive strands of Marxist thought: that of Mao Zedong… the book reveals the relevance of Mao to our current populist age