Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a monumental work, worthy both of Jung Chang’s Mao and of the great, rambling, heterogeneous Chinese folk epics of the oral past, such as The Water Margin and The Three Kingdoms. Its three fairy-tale heroines, poised between east and west, spanned three centuries, two continents and a revolution, with consequences that reverberate, perhaps now more than ever, in all our lives to this day.

Outstanding… As with her previous books, most famously Wild Swans, it is Chang’s sympathetic, storyteller’s eye — her attention to deeply human detail during the most extraordinary circumstances — that makes her work remarkable. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is another triumph.

The Soong sisters were an extraordinary trio… Jung Chang has shown, in books such as Wild Swans, her instinct for a compelling story, and that instinct stands her in good stead here as she weaves her way through the complex history of China from the 1880s to the 1970s… Well worth reading, in particular for the way it shows how powerful women have helped to shape modern China. At a time when, 70 years after Mao’s victory, the country’s political leadership contains almost no prominent women at all, that is a particularly apposite message to hear.

Chang is too deft a biographer to tell you how to think. The sisters are sage and foolish, selfless and vain, brave and fearful, loyal and treacherous… It is up to the reader to decide if the Soongs are fairytale princesses or wicked stepsisters… The sisters were divided by politics, united by love. Even as you recoil from their actions, you are moved by their bond. In this lucid, wise, forgiving biography Chang gives a new twist to an old line. Behind every great man… is a Soong sister.

One of this autumn’s biggest reads, it’s an astounding story told with verve and insight.

Utterly engrossing… It stars a trio of extraordinary women… Their gripping collective story reads like Wild Swans meets the Mitfords; and the history feels remarkably close to our own times too.

A remarkable story of war, communism and espionage related with nuanced sympathy… The lives of the three Song sisters – the subjects of Jung Chang’s spirited new book – are more than worthy of an operatic plot.

Gripping… Chang paints a deft portrait… Anyone who has read Jung Chang’s marvellous 1991 best-seller Wild Swans will know she is a skilled storyteller, with a masterful eye for telling details. This book, despite its length, fairly zips along, leaving you hungry to know more about China’s extraordinary and turbulent history in the past hundred years.

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, written in a compulsive style that sweeps the story along, is much the fullest account of their remarkable lives available in English… The sisters make a great story told with considerable sympathy for them… The warts-and-all portrait of “the Father of the Republic” is a welcome corrective to
the conventional hagiography.

A great idea, great research and great writing. This remarkable biography of the Soong sisters zips along, meshing the personal and the political with style.