At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China
Wong skilfully weaves his father’s and his uncle’s stories into an account of his own experiences in China, in a way that is deeply satisfying. At the Edge of Empire is valuable both on a political and a personal level ... Finely crafted.
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Told with a filial devotion that is consistently tender, never mawkish ... Mr. Wong must sell his story to us entirely on its own dramatic merits; and he must persuade us to empathize with the difficult choices that a mere citizen has to make in a totalitarian regime. This isn’t always easy for Western readers to do ... Mr. Wong’s telling of his father’s story is not without sentiment. But he brings to his descriptions of his father’s moral dilemmas the same objectivity and rectitude that marked his reporting as a correspondent in China.
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A family narrative, but one to which he consciously brings a reporter’s sensibility ... Wong tells a large and complicated story without losing sight of the personal, and the arresting detail of lives defined by China’s recent history.
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