How Mao Zedong's first biography became a literary sensation

It's been 90 years since the end of the Long March, the 10,000-kilometer journey undertaken by Mao Zedong and the army of the Chinese Communist Party.

Following the end of the march, Mao gave his first major interview to American journalist Edgar Snow.

The resulting book Red Star over China became a huge bestseller in the West, especially in the UK.

Meeting Mao

Edgar Snow opened the eyes of the West to what was happening in China in the 1930s.

His landmark work was the first authorized biography of Mao Zedong and gave a detailed portrayal of the grueling Long March.

In the summer of 1936, after smuggling himself through nationalist blockades, Snow managed to spend four months with Mao and other Communist Party leaders.

The resulting book came out a year later.  

CGTN Europe spoke to Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, who said the impact of  Snow’s work couldn't be overstated.

"Edgar Snow's Red Star over China was probably one of the single most important ways in which some sort of understanding of the Chinese communist revolution came to a Western audience," said the academic.

"Don't forget that at that time, in the mid 1930s, there was very little awareness, if any, in the wider world, of the Long March of Mao, or any of the things which are now fairly well known, certainly to historians and also to the public who knows a bit about Chinese history," said Mitter.  

"So having the Snow book out in the… intelligent reader community in the West, was a very important element in terms of telling that story," he said.

Left Book Club

Much of the early success of the book can be attributed to the Left Book Club (LBC) in London.

This book club was set up by publisher Victor Gollancz to provide cheap accessible leftist political literature to the general public to combat the rise of European fascism in the 1930s.

Instead of relying on standard, expensive bookstore releases, the LBC distributed thousands of copies of Red Star Over China to its subscribers, which at the time numbered around 60,000 people.  

Once the book was released to the general public, purely on the strength of word of mouth, it sold roughly 100,000 copies in the UK in its first month alone.

"It served a purpose in trying to normalize the idea of a Chinese revolution for Western readers, British readers in particular, who would have had a much more European idea of what socialism was," said Mitter.

The legacy 

Mitter added the legacy of Snow's book was the powerful myth created around Mao Zedong, a myth that persuaded many Chinese to join his cause.

"The book itself probably sets the scene for a lot of what you might call the kind of revolutionary myth of Chinese communist victory," explained Mitter. "The idea of this rugged revolutionary community out in the countryside of northwest China… essentially was a story that was almost a myth about an almost inevitable rise to power."

Since its original publication, the book has been translated into nearly 20 languages and has never gone out of print.

It continues to sell millions of copies to this day, particularly in China. 

In fact, a recent modern reprint in the country reportedly sold three million copies in just over a single year. It proves that interest in the book that was described back in 1937 as the "scoop of the century," still endures nearly 90 years after its publication.