Da Chen, the critically acclaimed author of the memoir Colors of the Mountain and the novel Brothers, died this month in California, the Associated Press reports.
Chen’s death from lung cancer was confirmed by his wife, Sun-Ling Chen.
Chen was born in the Chinese town of Huangsh and grew up in a wealthy family that had lost the land they owned after the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949. In the years following the revolution, Chen’s family was subjected to torture, and he was sent to a series of work camps during the Cultural Revolution.
“He would undergo a lot of humiliation parades where they would throw fruit and other things at him,” Sun-Ling Chen told the AP. “Frequently he was sent to labor camps where he worked with people twice his age digging irrigation trenches in the mountains.”
Chen told the story of his family’s trials in Colors of the Mountain, which became a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 1999. A reviewer for Kirkus said the memoir “displays an unusual and remarkable insight into Chinese life, and into the resilience of the human spirit.”
He followed Colors of the Mountain up with China’s Son, a young-adult adaptation of the memoir. In 2006, he published Brothers, an epic novel set in China and the U.S.; the book received extensive critical acclaim.
His last work, a children’s book titled Girl Under a Red Moon, was published in September.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas–based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
