Overview

“A sprawling, complex morality tale, sweeping us along.” —The Wall Street Journal “In telling this personal story about family memory, exile and return, the book also takes in the breadth of [China’s] evolution during the 20th century.” —The Washington Post “This book’s power comes from Wong’s broad sense of the patterns of Chinese history, reflected in the lives of a father and son, and from his ability to toggle effortlessly between the epic and the intimate.” —Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic “Edward Wong’s exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America’s finest reporters on China could deliver. In tracing his father’s journey—from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to America—Wong gives us a profound story of modern China itself. Anyone who once was absorbed by the power of Wild Swans will savor this meditation on memory, history, and belonging.” —Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book Award One of Foreign Policy’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024 An epic story of modern China that weaves a riveting family memoir with vital reporting by the New York Times diplomatic correspondent The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao’s promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he made plans for a desperate escape to Hong Kong. When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his father’s mysterious past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nation’s astounding economic boom and global expansion—and grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. Following in his father’s footsteps, he witnessed ethnic struggles in Xinjiang and Tibet and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. And he had an insider’s view of the world’s two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads. Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans decades of momentous change and gives profound insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. A groundbreaking book, At the Edge of Empire is the essential work for understanding China today.

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9781984877406

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Reviews

Advance Praise for At the Edge of Empire “Edward Wong’s exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America’s finest reporters on China could deliver. In tracing his father’s journey—from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to America—Wong gives us a profound story of modern China itself. Anyone who once was absorbed by the power of Wild Swans will savor this meditation on memory, history, and belonging.” —Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book Award “At the Edge of Empire is a splendid journey through 80 years of Chinese history told from the viewpoint of a nonagenarian Chinese American and his son, the former New York Times bureau chief in Beijing. Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find, and the interweaving of the highly personal accounts bring it all vividly to life in a way no other China book has for me.” —Barbara Demick, author of Eat the Buddha and Nothing to Envy “Edward Wong has masterfully merged the story of his father’s life in Hong Kong, China, and the US with all that he himself has seen and heard as a foreign correspondent in Beijing. He has created a seamless and engaging hybrid narrative that reminds us it’s people who write history.” —Orville Schell, author of more than a dozen books on China, including the recent novel, My Old Home, and the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society “Edward Wong has spent a peerless career in journalism chronicling the hinge points of 21st century history. In this sparkling book, he enlists generations of his family to tell a story of greater China that is both intimately personal and fundamentally global, a journey steeped in trauma, nostalgia, and even poetry that only his reporting talents could conjure.”  —Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist

Author Information

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times. In twenty-five years at the Times, he has reported from scores of countries and served as a war correspondent in Iraq and as the Beijing bureau chief. He is the winner of the Livingston Award for international reporting and was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a visiting professor at Princeton University and U.C. Berkeley. He has done fellowships at the Wilson Center and the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School. Wong speaks on global issues to television and radio outlets, including CBS, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, and BBC. He lives with his family in Washington, DC.

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