Compelling.

The stories the author relates are not, strictly speaking, secrets—most of the people Ms. Branigan interviews are already looking for listeners; they want to be heard, to perform, to share, to connect—and she gives them the opportunity to do that for a foreign audience. This is a book about their search for meaning, even when the search comes up short.

Red Memory creates an incisive exploration of the interplay between memory and politics, personal truth and political imperatives by detailing stories from victims and perpetrators — some willing, others coerced. Their narratives are told with sensitivity, interspersed with eloquent ruminations on memory and political erasure.

A narrative account of the period that also doubles as a meditation on how suppressed memories and trauma can haunt a society that has never had a proper reckoning with the horrors of its past.

At the heart of Branigan’s book is a series of remarkable interviews which she says would not be possible to conduct under the more restrictive environment for reporters in Xi Jinping’s China today.

A dark, gripping tale.

Branigan’s book is investigative journalism at its best, its hard-won access eliciting deep insight. The result is a survey of China’s invisible scars that makes essential reading for anyone seeking to better understand the nation today..

Absorbing.

Branigan... writes in an elegiac, humane, and sympathetic tone.

Branigan doesn’t make clear whether she speaks any of the several Chinese languages or has instead relied on interpreters, but her book displays the virtues of first-hand experience: it’s built on the testimony of a wide range of ordinary citizens and a determination to see beyond the clichés and prejudices that hobble unmodulated ideological positions. She is as interested in the psychology of perpetrators as she is in that of the victims.

Compelling.

Poignant, engaging.

Visceral.