Jung Chang will follow up her bestselling family history, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, with a sequel, 35 years after the original book’s publication.
Harper will publish Chang’s Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China, next year, the press announced in a news release. It says the book “once again traces the history of modern China through the true stories of three generations of women in her family.”
Wild Swans was published by Simon & Schuster in 1991. The book tells the story of the author, who was born in China and became a Red Guard when she was 14; her mother, a member of the Chinese Communist Party; and her grandmother, the concubine of a warlord in pre-communist China. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Chang offers an inspiring story of courage, sensitivity, intelligence, loyalty, and love, told objectively, without guilt or recrimination, in an unassuming and credible documentary style.”
The book, which is banned in China, was a massive bestseller, selling more than 15 million copies in over 40 languages. Chang went on to publish the books Mao: The Unknown Story, co-written with Jon Halliday; Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China; and Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister.
Fly, Wild Swans will be a continuation of Chang’s family story. “As she becomes a writer, the relationship with her homeland is made far more complex as she embraces her role as a chronicler of China’s returns to authoritarianism,” Harper says. “Facing increased surveillance as Chairman Xi Jinping comes to power, her freedom to write comes at an unbearable cost—though her mother, now in her 90s, is dying in China, Jung is not permitted to visit.”
Fly, Wild Swans is slated for publication on January 13, 2026.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
