Volume 47, Number 3 · February 24, 2000
Divine Killer
By Ian Buruma
Mao: A Life
by Philip Short
Holt, 782 pp., $37.50
Mao Zedong
by Jonathan Spence
Lipper/Viking, 188 pp., $19.95
These observations should not be taken on trust. The author, a loyal hack of the official Chinese Writers' Association in Beijing, based his text on interviews with Mao's former bodyguard, a man named Li Yinqiao. Li knew Mao intimately, it is true. One of his public duties was to unbutton the Chairman's trousers whenever he sat down, since 'Mao was big-bellied' and he didn't like his pants to 'become too tight for comfort.' But unlike Mao's ex-doctor, Li Zhisui, who wrote his famous account of life with Mao in the freer air of Chicago,[2] Li Yinqiao never left China, where the truth about Mao still cannot be told.
Review, 6311 words
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