Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden

"With sensitivity and sincerity, Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden takes readers through the most complicated, difficult, sorrowful, and indecipherable years in China’s modern history. Zhuqing Li’s beautifully narrated family stories are tightly entangled with the wider historical context, unfolding on a magnificent scale, and evoke unique feelings of pain and helplessness that belong to that era." -- Ai Wei Wei, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
"A heartrending story, beautifully told, about the struggles and triumphs of two sisters separated by the Taiwan Strait, but united in their determination to pursue meaningful lives amid political upheaval. I couldn’t stop reading it." -- Amy Stanley, author of Stranger in the Shogun's City
"In gorgeous prose, Zhuqing Li tells a story that is at once distinctive and familiar, of Chinese families of a certain generation that lived through wars, revolutions, separations, and reunions. I couldn’t put it down. A lovely book." -- Mae Ngai, author of The Chinese Question
"At last, a profoundly human story that illuminates the staggering personal consequences of China and Taiwan’s historic split—from both sides. Rare is the author who can portray war and its aftermath so evenhandedly. This powerful page-turner of a family torn apart—and surviving—is as unforgettable as it is important." -- Nicole Mones, author of The Last Chinese Chef
"Exceptional...Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden is not a history of Taiwan-China relations, but in telling this gripping narrative of one family divided by the ‘bamboo curtain,’ Li sheds light on how Taiwan came to be — and why China might one day risk everything to take it." -- Deirdre Mask - The New York Times
"[Li] recounts this real-life saga of rupture and reunion in propulsive, poignant detail. The book’s gripping narrative reveals the devastating human cost of the Chinese Revolution and will resonate, in particular, with anyone whose family has been severed by political events... The author’s perspective, from having lived both inside and outside the People’s Republic of China, yields exceptional insight into her aunts’ personal histories and the constantly shifting political vicissitudes they endured. She unspools the unexpected, accidental swerves each life took with spellbinding grace. Here, in the pages of her book, she has knit together the family story as it was lived in both Chinas." -- Diane Cole - The Wall Street Journal