PRISONER OF MAO

by Bau Ruo-wang (Jean Pasqualini) & Rudolph Chelminski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1973

The prison-work-concentration camp is an international phenomenon which has schooled an army of annalists -- we've had the German, Russian, Japanese, Greek, American, etc. varieties and now the Chinese, as experienced by the rank and file. Pasqualini -- incarcerated under his Chinese name of Bau Ruo-wang -- was a Chinese-French halfbreed, French citizen, former translator and odd job man for the American Embassy who was sentenced to twelve years of Reform Through Labor for possible (one might say probable) espionage while employed by the Marine Military Police (""I. . . had quite willingly worked in the middle of their activities -- some of which were painful""). He actually served seven years of his sentence, folding book leaves, making pipe rings, gathering pig manure, ""often in abject, despairing misery, sometimes literally starving and always haunted by hunger, in perpetual submission to the authority not only of guards and warders but. . . to the 'mutual surveillance' of my fellow prisoners and. . . to my own zealous self-denunciations and confessions."" On the job the emphasis was on output and efficiency (""China must surely be the only country in the world whose prisons turn a profit""); in the evenings there was consciousness-raising in which the prisoners were invited to tell all according to the latest line. Bau's ""school-mates"" -- resisters to collectivization, blossoms who bloomed too vividly during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, common extortionists, sexual deviants and adulterers, former POWs who had been recruited as Chiang's agents -- kept him alive so that when released he could tell their story. He has done so, coolly and descriptively, in this better-than-average prison memoir.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION