The release date for the English version of 'Mao's Last Dancer' by
Li Cunxin is Mar 2005. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Li Cunxin was raised in an impoverished hamlet during the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and his early years were centered on the commune, his family, and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.
That is, until Madame Mao's cultural envoys arrived looking for young peasants to enroll in the Beijing academy to learn dance, at which point he found himself in a whole new environment.
In a remarkable and dramatic story of Cold War intrigue, he defected to the United States after seeing life and love outside of China on a journey to Texas as part of a rare cultural exchange.
This is Li's amazing account of how he became Mao's last dancer and one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time, told in his own unique voice.