Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

It's an okay read which goes into patronizing diatribe by the end. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

If this is an accurate picture of Chinese society – and I have no reason to think it isn't – it’s really quite shocking. Not so much because of the events themselves, which are that of any country or society developing and becoming wealthy, with all the compromises and venality that that gives rise to, but in the hysteria and the extreme and often arbitrary violence that the Chinese demonstrate in their everyday life. Wealth and progress always come at a cost, but mob hysteria, cruelty and sexual violence seem to be accepted as the norm. There's even one scene later on in the book where one of the characters is raped but who the next morning is washing and ironing her rapist’s clothes and is completely forgiving in her attitude to him. An interesting insight indeed. The book covers a tumultuous period in Chinese history, from the Cultural Revolution and into the country's remarkable transformation into an economic powerhouse. Set in the fictional village of Guojiadian, we meet Guo Cunxian, a man as poor as his neighbours but who through native ability drags himself out of poverty into a position of power and wealth and enables his backward rural area to transform itself into a modern industrial region. But as is all too common, every rise can all too easily be followed by a fall, and hubris rarely goes unpunished. The book is very long and probably best read in chunks (unless your reading stamina is greater than mine) as there’s a lot to take in. It’s not always clear how much time has elapsed between scenes, either, and of course Chinese names can be difficult to absorb – although I must say the author is very good at delineating character and making it clear who is who. Daily life is vividly portrayed, along with the traditions, superstitions and attitudes to work, marriage and children that are part and parcel of normal existence. At the beginning of the book the villagers are not just poor but actually starving and hopeless and the transformation of the country is mirrored in their own personal improvement in circumstances. At times the omniscient narrator interjects his own musings and reflections and these can seem somewhat heavy-handed, but they do add to the panoramic quality of the novel. The translation seems to have a few missteps – for instance, one of the children is called Dog’s Bollocks, which jars on an English-speaking ear, but perhaps is indeed the accurate translation. The rise of a character, the rise of a nation – it’s all here in this all-encompassing novel about China’s recent history. I learnt a lot from it and mostly enjoyed the experience.

Wowser! Way too long. China? Yeah, I want to know more, but not this much more, all at once. No. I couldn't digest it all. Give me two years to read this book, in digestible parts, then maybe. This way too dense. Not recommended.

My feelings when I got to the end: Phew! This is a long book, for me too long. I found my mind drifting off at times, skipping pages, which annoyed me because this is a worthy and worthwhile read. The story of China, basically, and the huge changes that have happened in the last few decades, centred around the main protagonist Guo Cunxian and his family, but with a vast array of other characters who pass in and out of the book. I ploughed on, but only because I felt that I had to get to the end. This book needs time and patience, and would be, I'm sure, a rewarding read for many. Other reviewers have said many better things about this than I could, so I will accept that a 900+ page slow-burner just wasn't what I needed to read!

If you want to gain an understanding about how great events of the past effected and shaped those who lived through them and the changes that occurred economically and socially you can of course turn to the writings of historians or seek out personal memoirs. However great literature will also give you an appreciation and an insight of the essence of the age under review, Dickens on Victorian London or Dostoevsky on Czarist Russia are just two examples of this. Added to this list I believe should be Empires of Dust, Jiang Zilongs monumental account of the tumultuous period of Chinese history from the time of "The liberation" through the years of "The Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" and ending with the transformation of China under the emergence of the reform movement and state capitalism to become the powerhouse of today's world economy.

Much of Jiang Zilong's work concentrates on how economic changes transform the lives of ordinary people and the society they inhabit. This is the case here as we follow the life and career of Guo Cunxian who although ostensibly a humble peasant is able through his cunning, enterprise and sheer will power to become not only a rich and powerful man but transforms Guojidian the small village where he lives into a seat of industry and production. But inevitably hubris has its price and one day no matter how seemingly powerful you are there could be a day of reckoning.

This is not only a book about political and social economic change but it is about power and the corrupting and corrosive influence that it has. We also see the cruelty, fear and at times sheer absurdity that can emanate from a strict and rigid non democratic form of governance. This is a long book but one should not be put off by this for this sweeping narrative certainly had this reader engrossed and fascinated by the mixture of history, philosophy, politics and economics that it contained. You do need to invest a fair bit of time to complete this work but I believe that it is certainly worth it and ultimately you will be enriched by the experiencing of reading this wonderful book.

First of all, my thanks to ACA Publishing for making an ARC of this book available to me via NetGalley.

I am by no means an expert on 20th Century Chinese history, but it is a subject that fascinates me every time I read a book about it. I read Yan Lianke’s “The Explosion Chronicles” and “The Four Books” and I read Madeleine Thien’s “Do Not Say We Have Nothing”. Regardless of how I felt about each of these books, all of them made me want to learn more about The Great Leap Forward and subsequent events in Chinese history. It is, of course, a very different world to my very British life, but it is a period that coincides very directly with my own life as I was born in 1960, right in the middle of The Great Leap Forward (although, of course, I didn’t know that at the time!).

First, a small word of warning. When I requested this book at NetGalley, I checked on Goodreads which told me it was 712 pages long. I know that is a long book, but it’s not much longer than, for example, The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers which was the book I read before this one. However, when I received the book, I discovered it is actually 913 pages long. Then, when I opened it, I discovered each of those 913 pages has more words on it than you would normally expect in a book. For the purposes of budgeting, you should think of this book as being 1200-1300 pages long.

But that is not a reason to turn away from it. If anything, it’s a reason to pick it up. Yes, there are times when you think it could move on a bit more quickly than it does, but if you are prepared to invest some time into this book what you get is an absorbing story covering several decades of Chinese history. You might like to see some of the Wikipedia articles I read as part of reading this book:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Army
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learn_from_Dazhai_in_agriculture
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sent-down_youth
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Education_Movement
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_campaigns_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Yonggui
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaogang,_Anhui

Guo Cunxian is a peasant at the start of the book. He lives with extreme hunger and want. In his village, people die from starvation and malnutrition. That village, Guojiadian, is situated in the northeast of China in a region where nothing grows and the future seems bleak. We follow him through several decades along a path which, to a degree, follows that of The Explosion Chronicles already mentioned: Guo Cunxian is a man of rare abilities and he rises to extreme heights dragging his village with him, watching it grow in size and in wealth beyond what anyone could imagine. But, as the book blurb suggests, the foundations for that growth are not stable and disaster is looking for an opportunity to strike.

Several years ago, I spent an hour each week in the company of Tony Soprano. I’m talking, of course, about a TV series: The Sopranos. I watched Tony rise up through an organisation. I watched him wrestle with political issues and family issues. I watched him gain and lose friends, make and destroy enemies. At many times as I read this book, I was reminded of the time I spent watching that TV series. The setting is different, the people are different, but there is something about Guo Cunxian that reminded me of Tony Soprano. I found this book a compelling character study.

But it is not all about Guo Cunxian. We see other characters, whether relatives or other villagers, and we watch them jostle for position, rise and fall, succeed and fail. Empires of Dust would make a magnificent television series. Guo Cunxian’s uncle Guo Jingshi brings a bit of mystery and magic to proceedings. He drops in and out of the story, but always bringing something mystical and strange to the party. Women are treated badly in this book, but that does not stop some of them featuring as strong characters in their own right, even up to the final slightly ambiguous pages.

If you are interested in the recent history of China, this is a book worth committing time too. It will take you a long time to read it, but you will watch a man struggling to make the best of what life has dealt him as you also watch China progress through several decades of turbulence and change.

Why only four stars? Well, I have a couple of minor quibbles. Firstly, and I know this is a personal hobby horse of mine that would not bother most people, the book continually treats envy and jealousy as synonyms (I had a go at none other than Rachel Cusk about the same thing!). I wish I could learn to ignore this, but I do find it off-putting. It won't worry most people. There were some timing issues that only bothered me because I was using references to events as a means of tracking where we were up to in history and some of them I found tricky to align.

These are minor details, I know. They don’t spoil the overall story, but for someone as picky as I am, they do just take the gloss off.

Overall, I am glad I invested almost two weeks of my reading time in this book. I enjoyed reading it and I learned a lot about China over the last 50-60 years, so I would recommend it to others albeit with a warning about the length.